Disney is a company whose focus keeps moving backwards and forwards in an effort to change with the times. For decades, they were best known for beautifully animated movies. These movies took old fairy tales, removed some of the most questionable content and based them around a series of marketable princesses. Apart from that one about the lions; I forget what it’s called. In any case, like ‘The Little Mermaid’ song goes, these films were very much part of your world.
Then, slowly but surely, the House of Mouse began expanding their focus beyond animated movies and over-priced theme parks. This included video games and buying the rights to certain beloved sci-fi franchises.
While we’re all super excited for the release of ‘The Force Awakens’, it’s not hard to remember that Disney has other projects bubbling away. I hesitate to say ‘new’ because they’re live action remakes of some of their animated classics. Live action Jungle Book is near upon us and lives action Beauty and the Beast have famously cast Emma Watson as main character Belle.
Meanwhile, the live action Little Mermaid has not been drawing quite so much attention, but that might be about to change now that they’ve cast the titular Little Mermaid. While Watson seems the obvious choice for Belle, given her previous role as book-loving Hermione Granger, Ariel’s new actress isn’t known for playing mermaids or princesses.
Newly selected Chloe Moretz is more famous for playing costumed vigilante Hit Girl and we can only hope that she’ll bring some of that character to this project. According to Variety, Moretz has been the frontrunner for the role of Ariel for a while. This was apparently in spite of director Sofia Coppola not being hugely interested in her getting the role. Coppola has since left The Little Mermaid, citing creative differences.
A nice nod to Moretz’s previous role would be Ariel finding a butterfly knife instead of a fork.
