The Little Mermaid 2023 is coming out of the gate with strong opening weekend box office projections. The film, which was directed by Rob Marshall, is a live-action remake of the 1989 Disney animated classic of the same name, featuring songs by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. The new film will star Halle Berry as Ariel, the young mermaid who trades her voice to the sea witch Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) in exchange for legs that allow her to explore the human world.

Per Deadline, the early projections are in for the The Little Mermaid opening weekend, which takes place over the Memorial Day holiday weekend on May 26. According to their metrics, its four-day total including Memorial Day Monday will be somewhere in the realm of $110 million. This would just about match the original film's domestic total of $111 million long before the week is out.

The Little Mermaid Still Isn't Quite Reaching the Level of Disney's Other Blockbuster Remakes

Halle Bailey as Ariel in The Little Mermaid

While The Little Mermaid prepares to blow its predecessor out of the water, it still can't quite compare to Disney's biggest live-action remakes of the recent past. At the very least, it's more or less matching 2019's Aladdin, which also opened over Memorial Day weekend. That title took in a 4-day opening gross of $116 million, which is well within the realm of the new film's projections.

However, the film can't quite muster up the strength to compete with other major pre-pandemic releases. For instance, the 2017 live-action musical Beauty and the Beast came out with a whopping $174.7 million in just 3 days over its opening weekend. 2019's The Lion King performed even better, raking in a $191 million opening.

While The Little Mermaid is set to turn out a great box office performance, it's nevertheless not quite as impressive as it could be. This could be the result of several controversies the film has stirred up, including racist backlash to casting a Black actor as Ariel, online objections to alterations of certain lines in the original songs, and widespread mockery of the designs of the computer-generated characters Flounder and Sebastian. However, these are still early projections and the film could muster up steam in the meantime and end up grossing higher than anybody could have anticipated.

Source: Deadline