Mulan was intended to cater to the huge Chinese moviegoing market. However, its performance in the Chinese box office has shown that Disney’s plans have not worked out the way they intended.

Variety reports that the Disney film was only able to bring in $6.47 million during its second weekend in Chinese theaters. It had opened in China with a disappointing $23.2 million. In total, the film has earned a total of $36.5 million over two weekends.

Mulan made up only one in five movie screenings in China and 16 percent of the country’s total ticket sales. It is also expected to only gross $41 million at the end of its run.

In contrast, local historical film The Eight Hundred soundly trounced Mulan. The film has already spent a month in movie theaters and has earned $425 million so far. Local industry tracker Maoyan estimates that The Eight Hundred will bow with a total of $446 million in earnings.

The Eight Hundred has proven to be a certified blockbuster in China, beating even Christopher Nolan’s new thriller, Tenet. When the two films battled it out at the Chinese box office, The Eight Hundred earned $8.3 million, eventually ending the weekend at $32.3 million compared to Tenet’s $29.6 million take.

The film had also earned $2 million during preview screenings in a limited number of theaters, which was a big enough take to put it in third place during a weekend when the film dominating the Chinese box office was a re-issued Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Meanwhile, Forbes is speculating that Mulan may yet get to perform decently on video-on-demand (VOD), considering that it was offered on the streaming service Disney+ for $29.99.

Forbes took into account that whatever Disney earned on Disney+ goes directly to them, with no need to split the revenue with theaters. Even if Mulan were to earn only $93 million on Disney+, that would be equivalent to a $186 million gross at the theaters.

Even if Mulan ends up not recouping its cost on Disney+, Forbes points out that it gave Disney an opportunity to test out the paid video-on-demand capability of their platform as well as experience an uptick in the number of subscriptions.

Of course, the ideal situation would be to have movie theaters operating as they did before the global coronavirus pandemic. However, that seems unlikely in the near future as confirmed COVID-19 cases continue to rise.

According to the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 dashboard for Sept. 20, there are now 30,675,675 confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide. Deaths caused by COVID-19 are now at 954,417 people.