The live-action remake of The Little Mermaid was released in theaters over two months ago and still is not available on the Disney+ streaming platform. However, this may be a new strategy by the Walt Disney Company to force fans to treat mediocre movies as big events.
Two months since The Little Mermaid opened to middling reviews and decent but not blockbuster box office numbers does not sound like all the long, but it definitely does not match up with Disney’s recent habits for transferring new movies to Disney+.
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Encanto (2021) was streaming on Disney+ 30 days after its theatrical release. Lightyear (2022) was on the platform in 47 days. Strange World (2022) also took a mere 30 days.
Granted, both Lightyear and Strange World were notorious box office flops, and the company might have simply been eager to get on Disney+ and get them out of theaters. On the other hand, Encanto was one of the highest-grossing animated films of 2021 and, notably, one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved Disney films in years.
The Covid-19 pandemic might have been part of the overall Disney+ strategy for those three movies, but it doesn’t explain why The Little Mermaid is taking an awfully long time to get streaming. Why?
Simply put, it may be that Disney’s new strategy to make movies that are tepidly received by critics and fans feel like they are something special by dragging out their Disney+ release and acting like it’s doing everyone a favor by streaming their own content.
Notably, The Little Mermaid is already streaming on non-Disney platforms, which was likely a contractual obligation for the company. At the same time, Disney has not even announced a release date for its own proprietary streaming platform.
It is fair to say that the remake of The Little Mermaid, which starred Halle Bailey, Melissa McCarthy, Javier Bardem, Daveed Diggs, Awkwafina, and Jacob Tremblay, and featured new songs by Alan Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda, was not nearly as beloved as the original 1989 version. It would be difficult for it to match up to one of the most beloved animated movies of all time and arguably the catalyst of the Disney Renaissance.
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And it didn’t. With respect to the many people who worked hard on the movie and to market it, it was less an “Event” movie than something Disney fans begrudgingly tolerated, along with the Lion King (2019) and Beauty and the Beast (2017) remakes, and immediately put out of mind, even after a lot of regrettable controversies and queasy fan outrage.
If Disney is trying to turn that lack of recognition into a way to make it seem exciting when it finally arrives on Disney+ by artificially delaying its release… it’s not going to work.
Why do you think The Little Mermaid isn’t on Disney+ yet? Let us know in the comments below!