It was actually a large part of the audience
overseas that is directly to blame for Mermaid's unprofitability at the global box office.
The Little Mermaid did reasonably well in the USA. It was in overseas markets like Western Europe and East Asia where Mermaid fell well below expectations and box office projections by "experts".
If Mermaid had made its $300 Million in the USA but also had the same domestic/overseas percentage split as Barbie had this past weekend
(which would have put Mermaid at $400+ overseas), Mermaid would have broken even much faster.
The overseas markets from Japan to Germany failed to show up for Mermaid, and thus it lost money at the global box office.
Try as you might, you
can't (or at least shouldn't) blame audiences in the Midwest who did see Mermaid for the people in Frankfurt and Tokyo and Paris who chose not to see Mermaid.
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