Weekend Box Office: The Little Mermaid opens $117 Memorial Day Long Weekend

Updated With Mondays Numbers:

As expected, families took the extended weekend to spread out their trip to the theater, resulting in The Little Mermaid pulling in an estimated $117.5 million 4-day gross, making it the fifth highest grossing Memorial Day weekend opening of all time. Fast X grew to $28.6 million moving the franchise past the $7 Billion mark, making it the fifth highest grossing franchise of all time while Guardians Vol. 3 added another $6 million to its weekend take. The remainder of the films all saw increases of roughly $2-3 million. With stiff competition in the coming weeks, it will be interesting to see the types of legs some of these films have. Check out the chart at the bottom of the page for updated numbers on all ten films.

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Disney’s live action remake of their 1989 classic The Little Mermaid easily claimed the top spot this weekend with a reported $95.5 million 3-day take. While that number comes in shy of our $110 million prediction, it is to note that with this being a holiday weekend in the States, that number is actually meant to grow to around $117 million by the end of Monday as families didn’t feel rushed to get to the theater. That is good news for a film that is garnering decent, if not overwhelmingly positive, reviews (including a 6/10 from our own Chris Bumbray.) The real question will be how it plays over the coming weeks. It isn’t like a Super Mario Bros. Movie that has had the family market place to itself for several weeks and reaped the rewards, The Little Mermaid will face stiff competition in the coming weeks from Sony’s Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse next week followed by Transformers, Flash and even Disney’s own Elemental. With that said, and the fact that the film seems to have under-performed outside North America, it will be interesting to see if this film ultimately hits those billion dollar highs of other Disney live action remakes. With a reported $250 million budget, it will need to.

The good news is that audiences seem to be loving the film as it has garnered an A cinemascore and a 95% audience score. My personal thoughts on the film are that Halle Bailey absolutely nailed the lead role of Ariel while the visuals were quite excellent with this being one of the best 3D conversions I have seen on a Disney live action remake. It not just had tremendous depth, but also some really good pop outs with scenes of Flounder floating there literally right in your face. Hopefully Disney will continue its newly rekindled interest in releasing 3D Blu ray’s when this hits home video as it would most certainly be a demonstration level disc. 

Were you invited to the Family Barbecue? If so, you know that Fast X came in second place with an estimated $23.02 million, representing a sizable 66% drop from its already soft opening. However, those drops are fairly typical for this franchise as The Fast and the Furious films seem to be about as front loaded as comic book films tend to be. This drop actually represents the second biggest drop for the franchise at the domestic box office after 2021’s F9: The Fast Saga. Of course this film is playing the exact opposite game of The Little Mermaid as its overseas numbers are pretty solid which will hopefully propel this reportedly $340 million budgeted film into profitability. To put that into perspective, Avatar: The Way of Water reportedly cost between $350 and $400 million to make and needed to hit $2 billion worldwide to be considered profitable, which it did, because its Avatar! As much as I enjoy The Fast and the Furious films, they aren’t Avatar! Also keep in mind, with some of that budget, James Cameron filmed a lot of the next installment in that franchise, I haven’t heard any such claim about Fast X’s budget being used for the next (and supposed final) chapter. I know The Fast and The Furious has been Universal’s biggest franchise, but whoever greenlit a $340 million budget for this one may be out of a job when all is said and done.

Third place belongs to Chris Pratt as he saves our planet with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 continuing its solid run at the box office with another $19.9 million added to its $299.4 million domestic total. We talk a lot about Comic Book Movie fatigue, but let’s be honest, it’s bad comic book movie fatigue. Guardians 3 proves that when you make a film in that genre that feels fresh yet with that familiarity you have come to expect, audiences will show up. Unfortunately, it looks like the next film in the MCU (The Marvels) will not continue this upward trajectory for the franchise, but hopefully I am wrong and it was just a really horrible looking trailer. 

Fourth place belongs to Chris Pratt as he saves the mushroom kingdom with The Super Mario Bros. Movie continuing its monstrous run with an additional $6.2 million added to its massive $558.8 million domestic take. With more family options available in the coming weeks, and the film already on Digital and slated to hit physical media in early June, we can expect this one to start its slide out of the top five after two months, and let the sequel talk begin!

Counter-programming was big this weekend with four new offerings aimed at mostly all different audiences. Fans of stand up comedy had their pick of two films based on routines by immensely popular comedians with the winner being Bert Kresicher’s The Machine with an estimated $4.9 million while Sebastian Maniscalco’s About My Father fell slightly behind it with $4.2 million. I wonder if the Robert DeNiro starring About My Father will have better legs as it plays directly into a Father’s Day vibe that is still a few weeks away (June 18th for those of you that still need to buy a card.)

Gerard Butler was back on the big screen this weekend with Kandahar, the film didn’t pull in the best reviews(with the exception being the 7/10 from our own Chris Bumbray) and that translated to a pretty horrid $2.4 million opening weekend, about $8 million less than his previous big screen effort, January’s Plane which was actually a really solid action film. I have not yet had the chance to see Kandahar but have rarely been let down by Butler when he is in action star mode. Perhaps this one will see some solid returns when it hits the home video market.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus was back on the big screen with the film You Hurt My Feelings, re-teaming with her Enough Said director Nicole Holofcener. The film was a massive hit at this years Sundance Film Festival where A24 picked up distribution rights, giving it a fairly modest release of just over 900 screens, translating to a $1.3 million debut. Modest numbers, but with solid reviews (95% on Rotten Tomatoes with a 7/10 from our own Chris Bumbray) this one could be the perfect antidote to all those big screen summer popcorn films. 

Ninth place belongs to Evil Dead Rise with an additional$1.05 million.  The film has been an excellent continuation of the long running franchise in both the quality of the movie and the longevity it has had at the box office. The top ten is rounded out with the octogenarian sequel Book Club: The Next Chapter with a reported $920,000, which represents a pretty hefty 69% decline from last week.

Did you hit theaters this Memorial Day weekend? If so, let us know your thoughts on what you saw and don’t forget to check out our weekly poll where we ask: What is your Favorite Live Action Disney Remake?