Disney continues with its live action remakes of its animated classics. Taking into account that ‘The Lion King’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ are in the top 15 of the studio’s highest-grossing films, it is not surprising that it continues to want to squeeze its profitability at the box office. Among its upcoming adaptations, we have the new version of ‘The Little Mermaid’ that will hit the big screen in mid-2023.
The history
The synopsis that has been released about this new adaptation is what we already know: Ariel, a young and curious mermaid, makes a deal with a witch, for which she gives her voice in exchange for having human legs and being able to come to the surface to look for the prince with whom she has fallen in love.
The movie it will be a musical (such as songs from the original and new songs) and hopefully will take as a reference the 1989 version of Ron Clements and John Musker and not so much the Hans Christian Andersen story (which differs quite a bit, starting with the end of the story, in which Ariel died because she couldn’t make the prince fall in love).
The cast
To give life to Ariel we will have the actress and singer Halle Bailey (‘A crease in time’), which will be accompanied by Melissa McCarthy like Ursula and Javier Bardem Like King Triton. Jonah Hauer King (‘One more of the family’) will be Prince Eric, Jacob Tremblay (‘Wonder’) will voice Flounder, awkwafina (‘Shang Chi’) will be Scuttle and Daveed Diggs (‘Hamilton’) will be Sebastian.
The cast is completed by Noma Dumezweni, Jude Akuwudike, Kajsa Mohammar and Lorena Andrea.
The team
The address is provided by Rob Marshall (‘Mary Poppins Returns’, ‘Chicago’) and the script remains in the hands of Jane Goldman (‘X-Men: First Class’) and David Magee (‘The life of Pi’). Walt Disney Studios will produce the film with Lucamar Productions and Marc Platt Productions. Alan Menken will deal with music again, this time with Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Trailer
Release date
The project has been in the oven since 2016 and filming finished its recordings this summer. In Spain, the film will be released on May 26, 2023 and it will hit theaters (not like ‘Pinocchio’ or ‘Lady and the Tramp’, which went straight to Disney+).
