DVDizzy Forum

The report didn't reveal which character she'll be portraying. My guess is Vanessa/Ariel's rival.

Jessica Alexander Joins Disney’s Live-Action ‘Little Mermaid’ Pic
https://deadline.com/2021/03/jessica-al ... 234704206/

I can see that. The first picture that comes up on Google of her reminds me of the shot of Vanessa when she's watching Ariel and Eric come close to kissing one another.

I like the casting of Awkwafina.

I think she Will be good in the role.

I don't think we need a remake. The orginal was prefect

I just rewatched Witch (2015) and Anya Taylor-Joy would have been a perfect Ariel. She has the amazing acting talent, pure look of innocence, the beauty and the ability to get lost in the characters she play. Also, her beauty is very singular and she has a dreamlike quality to her that meets the idea of what a mermaid looks like (at least my vision) a bit like Gemma Ward as the singing mermaid from Pirates Of The Carribean 4.
Of course, I'm not sure that Anya can sing but oh well.. Just my two cents.





On another note, I'm not that worried about Halle Bailey's performance surprisingly but I am very worried about Melissa MCcarthy's take on Ursula. I loved Melissa in both Gilmore Girls and Bridesmaids but I've never seen her in a role that makes her look intimidating nor menacing and I really don't want Ursula to become a wise cracking villain like Hades.

They cast a beautiful black woman who has an amazing voice to play the character whose most important characteristic is her one-of-a-kind beautiful voice. And yet I am seeing multiple suggestions for different actresses who are of course white (ATJ is technically latinx, but even herself has said she appears white, so benefits from that) who people don't even care if they can sing or not. And this debate as to what is more important to the character, her voice or her looks, is sad. Do you have any idea how tone-deaf (no pun intended) you sound?

Why would it be "surprising" to not be worried about Bailey's performance? What evidence has she ever shown to not be completely capable of doing this role? What does Anya Taylor Joy or any other actress without any proven singing ability have that Halle does not? I mean I think I know what the implication is, but it's gross.

Also, Melissa McCarthy isn't some hack actress or comedian. She has been nominated for two Academy Awards for about as two different of roles as one actress could possibly play. You may only think of her from her broadly comedic star vehicles, but she has absolutely shown range in her acting choices.

Either Bailey's or McCarthy's performance could turn out bad in this movie, sure, just like anyone in any movies could. But this immediately writing them off or (in Bailey's case) immediately suggesting other choices isn't giving either actress enough credit, and speaks to some much deeper issues.

lord-of-sith wrote:They cast a beautiful black woman who has an amazing voice to play the character whose most important characteristic is her one-of-a-kind beautiful voice. And yet I am seeing multiple suggestions for different actresses who are of course white (ATJ is technically latinx, but even herself has said she appears white, so benefits from that) who people don't even care if they can sing or not. And this debate as to what is more important to the character, her voice or her looks, is sad. Do you have any idea how tone-deaf (no pun intended) you sound?

Why would it be "surprising" to not be worried about Bailey's performance? What evidence has she ever shown to not be completely capable of doing this role? What does Anya Taylor Joy or any other actress without any proven singing ability have that Halle does not? I mean I think I know what the implication is, but it's gross.

Also, Melissa McCarthy isn't some hack actress or comedian. She has been nominated for two Academy Awards for about as two different of roles as one actress could possibly play. You may only think of her from her broadly comedic star vehicles, but she has absolutely shown range in her acting choices.

Either Bailey's or McCarthy's performance could turn out bad in this movie, sure, just like anyone in any movies could. But this immediately writing them off or (in Bailey's case) immediately suggesting other choices isn't giving either actress enough credit, and speaks to some much deeper issues.

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!! You wrote exactly how I felt! I didn’t want to say anything because I feel like I’ve written enough about how disappointed I am by some people in this thread. Halle Bailey has been cast! Case closed. There’s no point in talking about other actresses. This casting has been official since July 2019 and nothing is ever going to change that. If you’re still mad about Halle being Ariel, then don’t watch the movie. It’s truly that simple.

I think the only implication is that Ariel should've been played by an actress with red hair. That's why I wouldn't have wanted Anya Taylor-Joy either. We don't know that Halle Bailey is a good actress. We do know she has a good voice, but I don't have any confidence in Marshall or Miranda to direct her properly. McCarthy likewise does have the potential to be great in the role depending on how she's directed. Whereas I expect the people in charge to encourage Bailey to oversing POYW, I expect them to push McCarthy to play Ursula as largely comedy. On paper, they both have potential though, it's more Marshall / Miranda I have no confidence in.

Sean Bailey, the president of production at Disney Studios, is the one who brought Lin-Manuel Miranda onto the project.

Q: Is it then a full 360° moment when you get the opportunity to collaborate and work with Lin on The Little Mermaid? Is it quite nice to get to work with him?

Alan Menken: The way it came about is people became aware about Lin's passion for this particular project. He was obsessed with The Little Mermaid. His son is named Sebastian and he would give interviews about that. I think it was Sean Bailey at Disney who had read one of those interviews and said 'Maybe Lin should work with you on The Little Mermaid.' And I had no idea what a collaboration with Lin would even look like or feel like. But I said 'Oh, okay. Sure' because a lot of what's happened in this part of my career is me being teamed with new collaborators. And I have wonderful collaborators I've worked with for many years but, whether it's working with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul on Aladdin or working with Lin on The Little Mermaid, that brings out new parts of myself.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJpADKLIOnQ


There are going to be five new songs in the remake as opposed to four that was previously reported.

Q: You were speaking of working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on the new live-action version of The Little Mermaid. How is it going and will we see rapping and hip-hop singing?

Alan Menken: A little bit. Yeah. There's one song that's...There's certain songs that are much more Menken and Lin kind of diving into the Menken waters and there's a couple of songs where I'm diving into the Lin-Manuel waters. [...] There's five new songs that we wrote.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuXErNCqaYY

Alan Menken wrote:You probably know that there are five new songs in the new live-action Little Mermaid that I wrote with Lin in our new collaboration and we had a great time working together.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56HVwJ44dGE

I expect more of Miranda's waters will be explored. Ugh. Menken's not pushy enough to say no to his suggestions, I imagine.

lord-of-sith wrote:They cast a beautiful black woman who has an amazing voice to play the character whose most important characteristic is her one-of-a-kind beautiful voice. And yet I am seeing multiple suggestions for different actresses who are of course white (ATJ is technically latinx, but even herself has said she appears white, so benefits from that) who people don't even care if they can sing or not. And this debate as to what is more important to the character, her voice or her looks, is sad. Do you have any idea how tone-deaf (no pun intended) you sound?

Why would it be "surprising" to not be worried about Bailey's performance? What evidence has she ever shown to not be completely capable of doing this role? What does Anya Taylor Joy or any other actress without any proven singing ability have that Halle does not? I mean I think I know what the implication is, but it's gross.

Also, Melissa McCarthy isn't some hack actress or comedian. She has been nominated for two Academy Awards for about as two different of roles as one actress could possibly play. You may only think of her from her broadly comedic star vehicles, but she has absolutely shown range in her acting choices.

Either Bailey's or McCarthy's performance could turn out bad in this movie, sure, just like anyone in any movies could. But this immediately writing them off or (in Bailey's case) immediately suggesting other choices isn't giving either actress enough credit, and speaks to some much deeper issues.

What a pathetic post. If you had taken the time the check this very same thread, you would have noticed that I have defended Halle and I even posted one of my drawing of her as Ariel to show my excitement for the fact that she was cast.
I said that I was not worried about her performance meaning that I trust the filmmakers who wouldn’t cast a role as important as Ariel and give it to someone who couldn’t handle it.
Now, if I want to keep imagining for my own pleasure other actresses playing the part, that’s my right and none of your business. In the future, do some research before throwing yourself at the chance of defending someone when the person you’re attacking is on the side of that very same so-called victim. The fact that you have the nerve to insinuate that I am against Halle's casting and worse that I have a problem with her race is beyond disgusting.

lord-of-sith wrote:They cast a beautiful black woman who has an amazing voice to play the character whose most important characteristic is her one-of-a-kind beautiful voice. And yet I am seeing multiple suggestions for different actresses who are of course white (ATJ is technically latinx, but even herself has said she appears white, so benefits from that) who people don't even care if they can sing or not. And this debate as to what is more important to the character, her voice or her looks, is sad. Do you have any idea how tone-deaf (no pun intended) you sound?

Why would it be "surprising" to not be worried about Bailey's performance? What evidence has she ever shown to not be completely capable of doing this role? What does Anya Taylor Joy or any other actress without any proven singing ability have that Halle does not? I mean I think I know what the implication is, but it's gross.

Also, Melissa McCarthy isn't some hack actress or comedian. She has been nominated for two Academy Awards for about as two different of roles as one actress could possibly play. You may only think of her from her broadly comedic star vehicles, but she has absolutely shown range in her acting choices.

Either Bailey's or McCarthy's performance could turn out bad in this movie, sure, just like anyone in any movies could. But this immediately writing them off or (in Bailey's case) immediately suggesting other choices isn't giving either actress enough credit, and speaks to some much deeper issues.

THANK YOU !!

The skin color of Ariel , doesn't matter a bit

It is not relevant at all

The only thing that matter is that she can sing and isn't ugly( Whatever that means for you)

Also Rob Marshall is a great director so iam sure he will do a good job

Although i still think this remake is totally unnecessary

I trust Rob Marshall will do a good jobb

I have like all movies Marshall has made !

In fact Rob Marshall is my number one choice to direct a movie adaptation of THE musical Wicked !

And i love Wicked !!!!

and isn't ugly

Bailey is very pretty, but I'm not sure it would matter if she wasn't a perfect beauty. I haven't cared for most of Marshall's past work, but I'm happy you like him.

Thanks for calling me pathetic, when it was about much more than your post. I have followed this thread since it was started, so I've certainly seen enough posts to inform my opinion. I am aware of your other posts, but it doesn't take away the bad taste your most recent post, as well as many others' posts have left in my mouth. It just strikes me so cold that people are willing to overlook anything else about an actress (by that I primarily mean singing ability) aside from what she looks like to deem her perfect for the role. I'm sure you meant no harm suggesting ATJ as Ariel, but it's important to consider the optics of what you're saying.

And these posts preferring Ariel to be cast by an actress with red hair. Pretty disqualifying to any black actress, no?

I don't usually post confrontational posts here, as past experience has shown me that constructive conversations are pretty rare, but I just had to point out bad faith criticism when I saw it.

As someone who had to survive Hermione Granger’s Beauty and the Beast, You all are going to be fine. Ariel fans got an actress who can sing!

Belle fans had to get a Beast who negs and a clearance rack dress for “empowerment” reasons.

lord-of-sith wrote:Thanks for calling me pathetic, when it was about much more than your post. I have followed this thread since it was started, so I've certainly seen enough posts to inform my opinion. I am aware of your other posts, but it doesn't take away the bad taste your most recent post, as well as many others' posts have left in my mouth. It just strikes me so cold that people are willing to overlook anything else about an actress (by that I primarily mean singing ability) aside from what she looks like to deem her perfect for the role. I'm sure you meant no harm suggesting ATJ as Ariel, but it's important to consider the optics of what you're saying.

And these posts preferring Ariel to be cast by an actress with red hair. Pretty disqualifying to any black actress, no?

I don't usually post confrontational posts here, as past experience has shown me that constructive conversations are pretty rare, but I just had to point out bad faith criticism when I saw it.

LOL. You're doing it again. You take my words and intent and turn it into something else. Did I call you pathetic ? No. I called your post pathetic. You have no right to insinuate that I have a problem with Halle Balle's race. I have been defending her since day one. I could have made a post like the ones I made for other princesses like Cinderella, Belle or Aurora but guess what ? I was not posting on this website when those films were announced.



I'm really not the kind of dude to go on endless rants and fights with people over things like Disney which are supposed to be fun and entertaining. However, as you said yourself this is some deep issues we're "fighting" about and I won't let anyone make it sound like I have some kind of sneaky subtext when I make a post like the one I made.
Anyway, I apologize to the other readers for this distracting argument. Cheers.

At least this is a friendly reminder that misogyny never seems to get an equal response on this forum, whether it's Belle or Jasmine in the remakes or Raya now. I think Redadoodles has made many posts that I personally perceived as sexism, for example, with no blowback at all--if anything, those posts received majority agreement--but he gets attacked for supposedly being racist which I don't think is actually even true of what they posted anyway? This forum is so strange with the way they cherry-pick their spots.

Disney's Divinity wrote:At least this is a friendly reminder that misogyny never seems to get an equal response on this forum, whether it's Belle or Jasmine in the remakes or Raya now. I think Redadoodles has made many posts that I personally perceived as sexism, for example, with no blowback at all--if anything, those posts received majority agreement--but he gets attacked for supposedly being racist which I don't think is actually even true of what they posted anyway? This forum is so strange with the way they cherry-pick their spots.

I think some posts have more nuance than others, but they get misconstrued to paint the poster as "racist" or "misogynist" and people are quick to judge. I never defended Redadoodles when he complained about Keira, I remember saying that while I disagreed with her, it's her prerogative to say what she feels and that I thought it was no big deal. I also don't remember seeing anyone putting Raya down, she seems to be well liked. As for the remakes - there's a difference between saying that empowering women is wrong vs saying that this specific empowerment is superficial and isn't done because Disney is suddenly woke (I can give for example them giving into Star Wars misogynistic and racist fandom when they basically undid everything with episode IX, gave Kelly Marie Tran only five minutes of screentime or removed the black actor from posters, not very nice of them is it?). There's also a difference between putting the new princesses down vs defending the older princesses, and I've mostly seen the latter rather than the former.
Anyway, I remember that when I did those sort of things I was called "holier than thou" or that I was trying to make people seem immoral, and I'm not here to fight or argue anymore, it's really not worth it.

My post wasn't about you, but in general. It's something I've noticed for a while. I know there's one poster who seems to haunt my posts at times to contradict any criticism I make of anything Disney does (whether it's an executive decision or something in a WDAS film), even if I so much as criticized Disney's drapes I would get a response like "Disney drapes are the most glorious in the universe," but then they say nothing when other posters are criticizing Disney for having more empowered female characters in their recent films. The silence is very loud.

It would be nice if everyone in general would stop accusing others (directly or indirectly) of being sexist/racist/homophobic etc. "Calling someone out" is actually against the rules as it's a form of personal attack. You can express your position and your perspective on something without making it personal or resorting to name-calling. It's really not that difficult.