There’s a new live-action version of Disney’s The Little Mermaid coming in May 2023.
The film will star R&B singer and Grownish actor Halle Bailey as the new Ariel, Awkwafina will play Scuttle the seagull, Jonah Hauer-King will be Prince Eric and none other than Melissa McCarthy will play Ursula – although the role has been slightly reinvented so she will be Ariel's "evil aunt".
Watch the teaser trailer for The Little Mermaid, coming to cinemas in May 2023. Post continues after video.
For Bailey, the experience of playing Ariel was something she deeply resonated with.
"Her sense of longing, her searching for herself, was something that I could resonate with. She knew where she wanted to go, and she wasn’t going to let anybody stop her," the actor said in Variety’s 2022 Power of Young Hollywood issue.
Understandably, how the tale will play out has been kept under wrap by Disney.
And to be honest, that makes us nervous. Because while the Disney movie is a classic boy-meets-fishgirl romance, if the writers stick closer to the original source material we’re all in for a downright disturbing viewing experience.
Top Comments
I've often been surprised at what children find scary these days. I had a kid hiding behind my desk so he couldn't see the screen when we were watching Madeline one lunch time, another who was terrified of The Numbertaker on Numberjacks and another who didn't want to see the Musica Viva performance based on Hansel and Gretel because she was afraid of the witch.
I think it's likely that in HCA's day, stories like TLM would have been considered just fine for children. He probably would have found the Disney version overly sanitised and wondered what all the fuss was about. I'm not sure it's a positive thing that kids' entertainment has become so mild, without any hints of anything frightening or sad.
I also think that things were different then, the time of public executions and floggings with whips at schools and prisons - so yes things are more sanitised now but its not always necessarily a bad thing? Maybe its going too far the other way - I do love Miyazaki films as I find they have a good balance and retain the bittersweet elements without being over the top scary or "Disney Happy".
Interestingly, there is a big conversation going on in academia about the rise in children’s gothic and what has been lost to children by sanitising, censoring and removing scary and sad stories from their hands.
This perspective might provide a useful balance to the content here. It at least provokes thought.
I still have some of my books of fairy tales, and a few of them are quite dark. The Little Match Girl, The Red Shoes, (Hans Christian Andersen was a dark fucker!) the original Rapunzel where the Prince falls into a patch of thorn bushes and is blinded. And yet I loved them so much, I was never scared or upset by them. (Although I’ve never been able to bring myself to buy a pair of red shoes!)
The thinking is that it gives children somewhere to channel their fears an by removing it we leave them more fearful.
No red shoes here either :)
I use to read them all as a kid, too, they never upset or scared me, either. In fact, although I love the Disney version of Little Mermaid, I remember being a bit disappointed that they had left some of the more hardcore elements out of the movie!