If there’s one movie you never expected to do well, it’s Disney’s live action remake of Mulan.

A giant Mulan billboard on a skyscraper.
You know Disney is putting a lot into advertisement when Mulan’s face is plastered all over a skyscraper like this.

According to Yahoo, a research firm did the math and calculated that 29% of all US Disney+ subscribers actually paid the $30 fee to watch Mulan. This totals up to about 9 million people handing over some $261 million USD to Disney. All that just for a live-action remake of Mulan.

Disney making too much money off of live action remakes.
Can’t believe this worked.

No matter how you look at it, that’s insane. Mulan‘s budget was $200 million. That already makes Mulan the most expensive movie ever directed by a woman. Yet, in spite of that, Mulan has already made a profit of $61 million for Disney just from that $30 fee alone. Not even counting box office releases.

Mulan, In Spite of Everything, Making Disney Money by the Pound?

Mulan aiming for money.
Not nearly as heroic as this seems.

That said, there’s a lot more than meets the eye. Mulan is currently flopping in box offices overseas, especially in China. China is significant because Disney was hoping to make the most money out of that country, so they marketed the movie specifically to Chinese audiences. That plan is currently failing spectacularly, due to a combination of mishandling of Chinese cultural elements…and also China banning all press about the movie domestically due to some international outrage regarding where some of the movie was filmed. We all know why at this point, so there’s no need for me to rehash this further.

Even Rapunzel is disappointed.
Yes, Rapunzel, I know. Cringe-worthy, ain’t it?

Aside from that bit of politics though, there’s more. We’ll never know exactly how much money Disney spent on marketing Mulan, but plenty of people have guessed. Variety has estimated that Disney spent about $50 million globally in marketing and advertisement. Deadline estimated $35 million, with $14 million of that spent on ads for that $30 fee version.

This all means that whatever money Disney is making off of Mulan, it’s nowhere near the amount they could’ve made. At least you can say that they’re not totally unaffected by karma.

Conclusion

Disney made a lot of money off of that $30 they extracted from Disney+ subscribers who really wanted to watch Mulan. It’s fortunately nowhere near as much as they’d have liked. Hopefully, this teaches Disney something. Hopefully.

Source: JoBlo.com