Online Racist Trolls Are Sinking ‘The Little Mermaid’s’ Box Office

How’s your Memorial Day Weekend going? The Little Mermaid is having a great weekend if you only look at what it’s doing domestically. So far this weekend, Disney’s newest live-action film has earned $95.5 million in just under three full days. That ups the projected opening weekend box office to $117.5 million, well above the projections before the movie opened.

Related: ‘The Little Mermaid’ Saved Disney Once. Can It Do It Again?

By that measure, The Little Mermaid has been the success that Disney needed. And it could not have come soon enough. Disney’s recent movies have been flops, and The Little Mermaid has been surrounded by controversy since the film was announced. The internet exploded when it was announced that Halle Bailey would play Ariel. Bailey, who is African American, personally received racist backlash online to her selection.

And now that racism seems to have traveled overseas and is dragging down the international box office for The Little Mermaid. According to Deadline, the movie has been “reviewed bombed” online and has helped decrease attendance. Officials in France, Korea, Germany, and the UK have had to issue statements regarding an abundance of “fake” negative reviews online. Most of these reviews were online before the film was released in these countries.

In France, AlloCine, which allows users to post reviews, similar to Rotten Tomato in America, issued a statement saying:

We are currently observiing an unusual distribution of scores which demand the need for caution. We encourage you to make up your own mind about the film. 

South Korea’s SBS News reported that the film had been affected by “ratings terrorism.” The article’s title translated to “Backlash Against ‘Black Mermaid’.” 

In America, The Little Mermaid has a 95 percent score on Rotten Tomato, but even that has not stopped the trolls from coming after the movie. The complaints usually start with the lighting or questions about why this movie was even made but somehow end with questions about race.

Despite all the negative reviews, the film has made $68.3 million internationally this weekend, for a total box office of $163.8 million.

With the final totals still to come, The Little Mermaid is already the third-highest opening weekend for a Disney live-action movie. It is only $12 million behind Beauty and the Beast (2017) and $24 million behind The Lion King (2019).

We will continue to update this story at Disney Fanatic.