The trailer for the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid is finally available. The first footage from Disney’s latest remake of a classic cartoon debuted during a mega panel at D23, the Disney-focused, Comic-Con-style event being held in Los Angeles.
We get our first look at Halle Bailey’s Ariel, the iconic singing mermaid princess, in the trailer. The trailer is brief and lacks any other characters. However, she will be joined in the film by an all-star cast that includes Melissa McCarthy as the villainous Ursula, Javier Bardem as Ariel’s father, King Triton, and Daveed Diggs as everyone’s favorite crustacean, Sebastian.
The Little Mermaid was directed by Rob Marshall, who rose to international prominence with Chicago and has since gone on to direct Mary Poppins Returns, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and Into the Woods. During the D23 panel, he revealed that The Little Mermaid will feature four new songs written by Alan Menken and Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda.
“I have a very special connection to this film because when it first came out in 1989, we could hear people singing in a movie for the first time,” he said. “It felt like destiny.”
Miranda was revealed as a producer on the film when it was first announced in 2016. Marshall joined the project the following year, though casting would not begin until 2019, due to Disney’s efforts to figure out how to translate the original underwater cartoon to the screen.
Filming was supposed to begin in April 2020, but due to the COVID pandemic, that was delayed until January 2021, when principal photography began, and the film was completed in July of that year. It’s been over a year, but D23 proved too good an opportunity to miss out on releasing the first proper trailer.
The Little Mermaid will be released in theatres on 26 May 2023. Meanwhile, read our review of Disney’s live-action Pinocchio remake, which recently debuted on Disney Plus.