The Little Mermaid defies backlash to open at Number One with big box office return

Disney's live-action remake of The Little Mermaid has been plagued by online hate ever since the first trailer dropped - particularly from racist trolls who seem to have problems with Halle Bailey starring as Ariel.

But throughout it all, Halle and her cast mates have kept a level head and put their focus into releasing the best film they could.

And that definitely paid off, now that The Little Mermaid has absolutely dominated the box office, with people coming to cinemas in droves to get a glimpse at the highly anticipated film.

Not only did the film open at the top of the box office and earn a comfortable $117.5 million over Memorial Day weekend, but it's now the fifth-largest Memorial Day debut ever.

It was last year's Top Gun: Maverick that set the new record for the four-day weekend when it earned $160.5 million at its debut. But fifth place is certainly nothing to turn your nose up at.

Globally, The Little Mermaid is heading for an estimated $163.8 million global debut, per Deadline.

This impressive turnout comes despite reports of 'review bombing' on film review websites following the film's premiere.

Like any Disney live-action remake, The Little Mermaid did get some mixed reviews from critics - though most did agree that Halle was a perfect Disney princess.

But some platforms have noticed unusual swarms of negative reviews piling in.

For example, on IMDb's, over 37,000 people have reviewed The Little Mermaid.

Of that 37,000, 15,000 gave the film one star out of ten.

The suspicious influx of poor reviews forced IMDb to issue a notice of unusual activity to users.

The notice on the website reads: "Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To preserve the reliability of our rating system, an alternative weighting calculation has been applied."

Disney

IMDb's new calculations have put the film at a 7/10 rating.

This isn't the first time The Little Mermaid has been hit with a wave of backlash.

When the first full-length trailer for the film dropped on YouTube back in March, it was flooded with hundreds of thousands of dislikes, and when the first teaser trailer was released last year, it racked up over three million dislikes.

Some disgruntled Disney fans even got the hashtag #NotMyAriel trending when Halle was first announced as the film's lead.

Honestly, do these people have nothing better to do?