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Disney fans have lapped up the next live-action remake over the weekend.
The highly anticipated reimagining of The Little Mermaid hit cinemas last week and it has become one of the biggest new movies to hit theatres all year.
Variety has now reported the picture is expected to make $118 million in domestic markets, making it the fifth-highest Memorial Day opening in history.
The last movie to reach these heights was 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, which earned an enormous $160 million on Memorial Day weekend.
Unfortunately, despite how popular and successful The Little Mermaid’s release has been, it has suffered enormously negative reviews as disgruntled cinemagoers review-bombed the picture.
READ MORE: Why Little Mermaid remake was sink or swim for its star
At the time of writing, IMDB’s rating system has The Little Mermaid with more than 40 percent negative, one-star reviews (out of ten).
The exceptionally negative response to the movie has been deemed an effort to review bomb the picture; a method of review abuse where angry viewers plaster the movie with bad reviews to make it look bad.
IMDB itself has even broken its silence about the movie’s horrifically bad response thus far.
The website has given The Little Mermaid’s review page the notice: “Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To preserve the reliability of our rating system, an alternate weighting calculation has been applied.”
The movie, thus far, has received a lot of criticism online for casting Halle Bailey, a Black actress, to play Ariel, a fictional mermaid from the sea.
Bailey recently spoke out about feeling “shocked” about the negative outburst from some social media users after it was announced she would be playing the Disney character.
Speaking to The Mirror, she explained she was “blindsided” by the backlash, which focused on Disney “going woke” with her casting.
The 23-year-old star said: “When the negative comments started, I was shocked because it wasn’t something I really anticipated – at least not on that scale. Then I started to think, ‘I’m from the Deep South, it’s not like this is the first time I’ve experienced racism.’”
She added: “My Nana used to see her family cotton picking and my grandpa remembers ‘whites only’ water fountains. When I think of the horrendous experiences they had, it makes a hashtag and some online hate seem totally inconsequential.”
The Little Mermaid is in cinemas now.
You can still watch the original Little Mermaid on Disney Plus now.
