The Little Mermaid Lands in Surprising Box Office News After Blowing Review | Movies | entertainment

Disney fans got in on the upcoming live-action remake over the weekend.

The highly anticipated re-imagining of The Little Mermaid hit theaters last week and has become one of the biggest new movies to hit theaters all year.

Variety is now reporting that the picture is expected to gross $118 million in domestic markets, making it the fifth-highest-grossing Memorial Day opening in history.

The latest film to reach such heights was 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, which grossed $160 million in its Memorial Day weekend.

Unfortunately, despite how popular and successful the version of The Little Mermaid was, it suffered from extremely negative reviews as disgruntled moviegoers bombed the picture.

Read more: Why the Little Mermaid print was sink or swim for its star

At the time of writing, the IMDB rating system has The Little Mermaid with over 40 percent negative one-star (out of ten) reviews.

The exceptionally negative response to the film was seen as an attempt to revise the picture with bombs; A method for reviewing abuse where angry viewers plaster a movie with bad reviews to make it look bad.

IMDB itself has broken its silence about the film’s appallingly poor response so far.

The website gave The Little Mermaid review page a notice: “Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To maintain the reliability of our rating system, an alternative weighting calculation has been applied.”

The movie has, so far, received a lot of criticism online for casting black actress Halle Bailey, to play Ariel, the fictional mermaid from the sea.

Bailey recently spoke of feeling “shocked” about the outburst of negativity from some social media users after it was announced that she would be playing a Disney character.

Talking to womanshe explained that she was “shocked” by the backlash, which focused on Disney “woke up” by her casting.

“When the negative comments started, I was shocked because it wasn’t really something I expected — at least not that big,” said the 23-year-old star. “Then I started thinking, ‘I’m from the deep south, this isn’t the first time I’ve felt racist.’”

She added, “Nana used to see her family picking cotton and my grandfather remembers the ‘whites only’ water fountains. When I think about the horrific experiences they’ve had, it makes a hashtag and some of the hate online seem completely inconsequential.”

The Little Mermaid is in cinemas now.

You can still watch the original Little Mermaid on Disney Plus now.