‘The Little Mermaid’ tops the US box office upon its theatrical release

It’s a good start for The little Mermaid from Disney. The live-action version ranks first in the North American box office for its first weekend in theaters, taking advantage of the “Memorial Day” holiday Monday in the United States, according to the specialized firm Exhibitor Relations. According to this, the film collected $117.5 million at the American and Canadian box office as well as $68 million internationally.

The 1989 cartoon remake is still set near a fictional Caribbean island in the 1830s. Ariel (played by Halle Bailey), an 18-year-old mermaid, is the youngest of seven daughters of King Triton (Javier Bardem ) who rules the oceans from his underwater kingdom. The young girl has always admired the human world, to the point of accepting a terrible pact with her aunt, the sea witch Ursula (Melissa McCarthy).

A better start for “The Lion King” in 2019

“For a decade, Disney has been making live-action movie remakes a powerful phenomenon”says analyst David A. Gross in his newsletter FranchiseRe. He notices, however, that The little Mermaid Still, it did less well for its first weekend than other Disney live-action releases. It’s less than The Lion King in 2019 (191.8 million) and The beauty and the Beast in 2017 ($174.8 million).

Ariel, however, does better than FastX, which ranks second with just $29.5 million raised over the weekend. It’s less than half what the franchise’s action movie Fast & Furious had garnered the previous weekend when it was released. The Marvel movie Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 and the animated movie Super Mario Bros, the movieinspired by the video game of the same name, also fell one place each, to third and fourth place, with receipts of $25.3 million and $7.7 million respectively.