DVDizzy Forum

Q: Your next project is Disney's live-action The Little Mermaid, which is a project with so many built-in fans and also so many expectations. How has that process been? Were there things you wanted to add to that story that hadn't been in any of the other adaptations?

David Magee: First of all, it was a joy to work on. It was an absolute pleasure. The animated Little Mermaid is a classic — I am not in any way going to ever disparage anything about that — but I will say, in an animated film, you can do things in a way that you can't do in a live adaptation. For example, there's a funny scene where the French chef chases Sebastian around with a meat cleaver. If you do that with a real chef running around trying to harm a crab that you've come to know and love as an actual living being, it is not funny. So, there is a lot of trimming away the stuff that works best in animation, and rethinking how to tell a story about someone who feels like they don't belong in the world they're in, and they don't quite belong in the world they want to be in.

Along with Alan Menken, and Lin-Manuel [Miranda], and Rob Marshall, and [producer] John DeLuca, we had to rethink, 'Are there other ways that we can go into the mind of this young girl who doesn't talk? Are there ways that we can tap into what her journey is when she gets on land and she realizes it's not all she hoped it would be?' And so, to deepen that, Alan and Lin created new songs where we were hearing her thoughts about what she's going through. And in working on deepening the character of the Prince, who is a lovely animated character who's basically just dumbstruck really, we had to find a reason that he's falling for this beautiful young woman that's not just about the fact that she's beautiful and young. But that they identify with something in each other in a way that transcends having to talk about it.

It was a lot of the exploration that we did. And the result, I couldn't be more excited about it. I haven't seen it in a while, because they've been working on those special effects for a long time now. I'm very much looking forward to seeing it, but everything I know about what Rob created is that it's going to be tremendous. And I can't wait!

Q: And Halle Bailey looks wonderful as Ariel. Just wonderful.

David Magee: She's tremendous. She sings in a room with five people there and cardboard boxes to represent the walls, and we're all in tears after about 30 seconds, because she is that powerful a singer. She's the real deal.

lord-of-sith wrote: ↑Tue Jan 10, 2023 12:10 pm The character design I'm most worried about is Sebastian. It was always going to be an uphill battle to make that character work in live action, and the cover of that book seems to imply he's going to look like a basically photo real crab. I cannot imagine that looking anything but inhumanly creepy talking to Ariel.

Farerb wrote: ↑Tue Jan 10, 2023 12:17 pm I didn't expect anything else considering I actually saw the Beauty and the Beast remake and The Lion King remake.

Farerb wrote: ↑Tue Jan 10, 2023 12:17 pm

lord-of-sith wrote: ↑Tue Jan 10, 2023 12:10 pm The character design I'm most worried about is Sebastian. It was always going to be an uphill battle to make that character work in live action, and the cover of that book seems to imply he's going to look like a basically photo real crab. I cannot imagine that looking anything but inhumanly creepy talking to Ariel.

I didn't expect anything else considering I actually saw the Beauty and the Beast remake and The Lion King remake.

lord-of-sith wrote: ↑Wed Jan 11, 2023 8:01 amI thought they might come up with a way to find a happy middle ground with Sebastian, so he can still be expressive in a human way. Considering he has two of the biggest songs in the movie, I can't help but wonder what that will look like coming from a character with essentially no face.

Vlad Sicoe wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 4:42 am There's a fan account on Instagram claiming that a new trailer for the movie will be released this month. Is this true? Do you guys know anything about it?

Farerb wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 11:29 pm Leaked Funko pops:

Sotiris wrote: ↑Sun Jan 08, 2023 8:40 pm Interview with the remake's screenwriter.

Disney Duster wrote: ↑Wed Jan 11, 2023 10:55 pm They probably tried to find some middle ground like that before, but discovered there's no way cartoony CGI looks good with photorealistic people. Photorealistic animals look good with photorealistic people.