TheQuartering [10/5/2023]
According to BoundingIntoComics:
Vanity Initially Reported the film cost around $250 million to produce in their coverage of the film’s opening weekend box office woes. Ellise Shafer and Pat Saperstein wrote, “With a $250 million production budget, The Little Mermaid must bait box office success in order to make a reasonable return.”
However, a new report from Caroline Reid at Forbes reveals the film’s budget “swelled to nearly $300 million by the end of August last year, eight months before the movie opened.”
Reid’s report is based off of filings in the United Kingdom where she uncovered that the film’s production company was filed under The Walt Disney Company subsidiary Sand Castle Pictures.
Those filings also show that Disney did receive a rough £46.6 million tax rebate which converts to $56.8 million. That means the net budget would decline to $240.2 million.
However, that net estimate might actually be low given her calculations appear to not factor in any kind of currency exchange or inflation given the costs for The Little Mermaid’s production go back to 2019.
On top of that, it’s possible another report could also come in adding additional costs given the last report was from August 2022 and the film did not arrive in theaters until May 2023. Reid does note that this filing does not include other post-production costs, which can range in the tens of millions of dollars.
Nevertheless, if you use Reid’s rough estimate of the production budget clocking in at $297 million after converting from £243.5 million, the film’s losses more than double what many estimates had for the film using the $250 million estimate.
According to The-Numbers, The Little Mermaid only made $569.1 million worldwide with $298.1 million coming from the North America while $270.9 million came from various international markets.
Using the $250 million production budget, the film needed to gross at least $625 million to break even. Obviously, the film did not do that and thus estimates of its losses came in just shy of $60 million.
However, if you adjust the production budget to the new $297 million number provided by the UK government, the break even point moves to $742.5 million. Thus the losses have also increased to $127.8 million.
