Ariel may want to be where the people are, but the first teaser trailer for Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid takes viewers down where it’s wetter, providing a first look at Halle Bailey as Ariel and a first listen to her rendition of “Part of Your World.”
“The three days filming ‘Part of Your World’ was the most beautiful experience of my life,” the actress said onstage at D23 Expo 2022, where the teaser debuted. “I’m sure all of you in here can relate to Ariel and how special she is to all of us. Being a little girl swimming in the pool, imagining I was a mermaid, I never imagined that would come to life [like this].”
The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 28th Disney animated feature film, it is loosely based on the 1837 Danish fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen. The film tells the story of a teenage mermaid princess named Ariel, who dreams of becoming human and falls in love with a human prince named Eric, which leads her to make a magic deal with the sea witch, Ursula, to become human and be with him. The Little Mermaid was written and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements and produced by Musker and Howard Ashman, who also wrote the film’s songs with Alan Menken. Menken also composed the film’s score. The film stars the voices of Jodi Benson, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Pat Carroll, Samuel E. Wright, Jason Marin, Kenneth Mars, and Buddy Hackett.
Walt Disney planned to put the story in a proposed package film containing Andersen’s stories, but scrapped the project. In 1985, while working on The Great Mouse Detective (1986), Clements and Musker decided to adapt the fairy tale and proposed it to Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, who initially declined due to its similarities to a proposed sequel to the 1984 film Splash, but ultimately approved of it. Ashman became involved and brought in Menken. With supervision from Katzenberg, they made a Broadway-style structure with musical numbers as the staff was working on Oliver & Company (1988). Katzenberg warned that the film would earn less since it appealed to females, but he eventually became convinced that it would be Disney’s first blockbuster hit.
The Little Mermaid was released to theaters on November 17, 1989, to critical acclaim, earning praise for the animation, music, and characters. It was also a commercial success, garnering $84 million at the domestic box office during its initial release, and $235 million in total lifetime gross worldwide. After the major success of both the 1986 Disney animated film The Great Mouse Detective and the 1988 Disney/Amblin live-action/animated film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid is given credit for breathing life back into the art of Disney animated feature films after some films produced by Disney were struggling. It also marked the start of the era known as the Disney Renaissance. The film won two Academy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song
Director Rob Marshall is at the helm for this reimagining of the 1989 animated classic, which won Best Original Song for Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s “Under the Sea” and Best Original Score at the 62nd Oscars. The new version of The Little Mermaid features those iconic songs as well as four new tracks penned by Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Though the teaser focuses on the debut of Bailey’s Ariel — with the briefest of glimpses at Flounder (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) swimming in her dinglehopper-filled grotto — the cast also includes Daveed Diggs as Sebastian, Awkwafina as Scuttle, Javier Bardem as King Triton, and Melissa McCarthy as Ursula the sea witch.
The Little Mermaid arrives in theaters on May 26, 2023.
Watch the teaser trailer below.
