The latest Disney animated classic to get the live-action remake treatment is 1989’s The Little Mermaid.
Based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, the original film famously depicted Ariel as a redhead.
However, for the sake of re-imagining, the studio moved the action to the Caribbean, where he played African-American singer Halle Bailey.
Upon her announcement of the product’s casting in 2019, there was some backlash over the race exchange, while others called the response racist.
The new film has continued to receive a mostly positive reaction from critics amid review bombing on various sites such as IMDb, with such outlets adding a warning to the film’s rating pages saying, “Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To maintain the reliability of the system For our classification, an alternative weighting calculation was applied.”
Read more: Why the Little Mermaid print was sink or swim for its star
Despite a relatively decent start to box office takings in the US, where it grossed over $206 million, The Little Mermaid struggled in other territories.
Particularly in Asian markets such as China and South Korea where Disney films can typically fetch between $40-85 million.
In China, the Disney film made just $3.6 million in its opening weekend and only $4.4 million in South Korea, with some commentators blaming the racist backlash on the recast of Ariel.
according to WatchmanLast month, China’s state media, the Global Times, accused Disney in an article of “forced inclusion of minorities” and “lazy and irresponsible storytelling.”
The Little Mermaid also has 2.5 stars on Douban, a popular Chinese review site.
However, it should be noted that many of the reviews out there are critical of the movie’s plot rather than the star choice.
The Little Mermaid is now in cinemas.
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