‘The Little Mermaid’ is set to break a Disney Plus record with its streaming debut

Remember the days when we used to wait months and months for a film we saw in the theatres to arrive on VCR or DVD? Nowadays it’s more like weeks from the film’s final run in the theatre before it lands on a streaming platform somewhere on the internet. The Little Mermaid, however, has not been so speedy; maybe she’s still figuring out how to run on those new legs of hers.

The Little Mermaid was one of Disney’s better rated live-action films, though, despite all the hype, it was not a financial success for the studio, pulling in $567.56 million at the box office. Though this isn’t a bad run by any means, and currently lands the adaption in seventh place on the global box office list, per Box Office Mojo. It hasn’t been a stellar return for Disney, which spent $250 million on production and $140 million in global marketing plus other expenditures. The film had to make just over $560 million to break even, which it just about did, but it still fell well short of expectations.

The film will soon be swimming on over to Disney Plus and crashing on the platform on Sept. 6. This means that since The Little Mermaid debuted in theatres it will have been 103 days between its theatrical release and arrival on streaming. This has set the record for the longest wait between a theatrical release and streaming release for a Disney film since the beginning of Disney Plus, which may have left some fans slightly perturbed.

For comparison, let’s take a look at the length of time from theatre to streaming for other Disney offerings. Onward arrived in theatres on March 6, 2020, and then on Disney Plus on April 3, 2020, for a total of 28 days. The popular Encanto was 51 days, from November 3, 2021 to December 24, 2021, and Strange World was 30 days. So for The Little Mermaid to be taking it’s sweet time is a little odd, most likely the studio will trying to be squeezing that box-office as tight as they can before allowing Disney Plus subscribers access to it.

The movie did receive a fair amount of critical praise and positive audience response, which prompted others to go see it a little later than its initial release, so keeping it in theatres was a financially prudent idea. The other case that has been made by The Direct is that the studio would have been holding off until after the digital release, which came on July 25, again with the hopes they could make more money from people buying The Little Mermaid before it gets added to Disney Plus.

For the rest of us, we just have to wait till Sept. 6 when it will become free to watch (outside of the subscription fee of course) on Disney Plus.