Un joyeux anniversaire à la talentueuse et ravissante Halle Bailey, qu'il me tarde de découvrir dans le rôle emblématique d'Ariel le 24 Mai. Pour l'occasion j'ai réalisé cette illustration.
Super illustration ! Waouw !
Joyeux Anniversaire à Halle, j’espère que ce rôle va la propulser et qu’elle aura une belle carrière au cinéma J’ai vu que la poupée Mattel à son image était numéro 1 des ventes Amazon, la hype est vraiment élevée.
Moi en tout cas j'aurais aimé que sa couleur de cheveux soit plus vers le rouge. Dans le Twisted Tale il est justement fait mention que chez les humains, sa couleur est très voyante et peu naturelle, ce qui renforce l'aura d'Ariel (et cette dernière s'étonne de cette réflexion car justement pour le peuple de la mer, le rouge est une couleur banale alors que certaines sirènes et tritons ont les cheveux vert ou bleu). J'aurais aimé que le film assume plus ce parti artistique. Parce que pour le coup, je trouve que la couleur de cheveux d'Halle dans le film est assez terne et rend Ariel humaine bien banale alors que pour moi, elle est plutôt censée fasciner ce nouveau monde. D'ailleurs, quelle est cette couleur? Parce que pour moi ce n'est ni du roux, ni du blond, mais une sorte de mélange entre les deux. Je trouve que l'excuse des soeurs qui n'auraient que peu de temps à l'écran, donc peuvent se permettre d'avoir des couleurs capillaires plus marquées, est bien facile (et d'ailleurs certaines sources affirment que les soeurs seraient bien plus présente dans cette version et partiraient même à la recherche d'Ariel suite à l'appel de Triton dans la conque magique). Et pour rebondir sur le personnage de Mera, justement je trouvais cette couleur juste sublime, que ce soit sous l'eau ou sur terre.
Totalement d'accord avec cela. Dans les scènes où on la voit humaine, il n'y a plus rien d'Ariel en elle, on pourrait presque croire que ces images sont tirées d'un autre film. Je ne suis pas convaincu par ces histoires de "ça aurait rendu fake", ça n'a pas l'air de les avoir dérangés quand il s'agit de designer les compagnons de la petite sirène. Sébastien surtout, on y croit pas une seconde. Après, pas forcément les cheveux rouge rouge, mais au moins qu'ils tirent un peu sur le rouge.
Avertissement : soit vous vous calmez et vous êtes capables de parler du film sans tout ramener à une couleur quelle qu'elle soit, soit il y aura une série de bannissements.
Les propos discriminants dans un sens comme dans l'autre ne sont pas acceptables ! Les attaques personnelles non plus.
Merci de revenir au sujet du film : l'histoire, les bandes annonces, la musique.... mais de grâce élevez le débat au delà d'une couleur !!! Modération désabusée !
Prince, Lolo88, Onil1992mickey et Michael Scott aiment ce message
Dernière édition par fauna le Mar 28 Mar 2023 - 15:18, édité 1 fois
Superbe nouvelle ! La Chine reste un marché important, espérons de beaux chiffres pour le film. Ça sera la meilleure réponse à toutes les critiques et commentaires dégoûtants.
Ah oui super que le pays qui a commandité le massacre de sa population parce qu’elle est différente, ouvre son portefeuille. Non vraiment, l’inclusivité mérite bien cela.
En tout cas on est sur qu’on aura rien d’engagé dans ce film. En tout cas rien pour faire sourciller la Chine et dans le pire des cas, un coup de ciseaux comme pour Winnie.
Je viens de visualiser la bande-annonce, elle est rassurante. J'espère juste qu'ils n'ont pas mis trop d'effets spéciaux +- fantastiques comme dans Jungle Cruise. La prestation d'Halle Balley me plait, je lui trouve même un petit côté espiègle à la manière de Julia Roberts. Je pense aller voir ce film dès sa sortie. Question annexe: une figurine de Halle Balley signée Jim Shore est-elle prévue, ou bien une version Showcase ?
Merci Fauna pour ta réponse claire. J'ai bien noté pour la Funko Pop mais je n'aime pas leurs visages cubiques. Je viens sur le parc Disneyland deux jours avant la sortie du film. Pourrais-je y trouver du merch dans dans les boutiques (je pense au coffre du capitaine) ?
Merci Fauna pour ta réponse claire. J'ai bien noté pour la Funko Pop mais je n'aime pas leurs visages cubiques. Je viens sur le parc Disneyland deux jours avant la sortie du film. Pourrais-je y trouver du merch dans dans les boutiques (je pense au coffre du capitaine) ?
Je suppose que la poupée Disney store sera en vente dans le parc, ainsi qu’un tas d’autres produits autour du film. En tout cas j’ai vu plein de leak sur les produits dérivés, on voit que Disney mise bcp sur le film.
@Flounder69 Je pense qu'il a surtout posté ça pour qu'on voit bien le design des sœurs d'Ariel. Je les trouve jolies à part celle qui a une queue jaune. Je trouve la forme de sa queue très étrange. Mais je suppose que ça rendra mieux sous l'eau.
@Flounder69 Je pense qu'il a surtout posté ça pour qu'on voit bien le design des sœurs d'Ariel. Je les trouve jolies à part celle qui a une queue jaune. Je trouve la forme de sa queue très étrange. Mais je suppose que ça rendra mieux sous l'eau.
Exactement c’était pour le design des sœurs, ce n’est pas un produit disney store. Au passage, ce que propose le disney store actuellement autour du film est vraiment affreux (a mes yeux)...
Que ce soient des produits estampillés ShopDisney ou non, le sujet à privilégier pour les produits dérivés du film est celui disponible dans la partie "Disney Store" du forum
Pour ce qui est de l'apparence des sœurs, on a déjà eu plusieurs visuels bien plus représentatifs que des poupées "simplifiées" dans les pages précédentes. Via des illustrations des produits dérivés ou des extraits dans les bandes-annonces.
Comme celui-ci par exemple :
Onil1992mickey a écrit:
Ça se concrétise pour le look des sœurs et de Triton
Dans une interview pour Vanity Fair, Alan Menken a révélé les titres des nouvelles chansons :
- "Wild Unchartered Waters", la chanson du Prince Eric. - "For the First time", nouvelle chanson pour Ariel après avoir obtenu ses jambes, qui chante en pensées sur toutes les choses qu'elle découvre pour la première fois. - "Scuttlebutt", chanson pour Eurêka et Sébastien, qui essaient de comprendre ce qui se passe parce qu'ils entendent des rumeurs selon lesquelles le prince a décidé de se marier. Ils pensent que ce doit être Ariel mais c'est en fait Ursula (sous la forme de Vanessa). - "Impossible Child", une chanson pour le Roi Triton qui a finalement été coupée du montage, mais devrait être disponible dans la BO ou les bonus.
Il a également révélé qu'il y a des changements dans les paroles de "Kiss the Girl" et "Poor Unfortunate Souls".
The man behind some of Disney’s most memorable scores and songs reflects on his influence in film, musical theater, and beyond.
BY LEIGH SCHEPS MARCH 31, 2023
As the composer behind The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, Alan Menken has created some of Disney’s most recognizable scores and songs. His canon has paved the way for modern-day animated musicals like Frozen and Encanto, and influenced a generation of songwriters working in film, musical theater, and beyond. With lyricist Howard Ashman (Menken’s collaborator until Ashman’s death in 1991), Menken was a driving force behind Little Shop of Horrors, which premiered off-off Broadway in 1982, and more than 40 years later is still playing at New York’s Westside Theatre. Hercules, which Disney released in 1997 and Menken worked on with lyricist David Zippel, just wrapped up a regional run in New Jersey, and will move on to premiere in Germany, while Aladdin (which also featured lyrics by Tim Rice, who helped finish Aladdin’s songs following Ashman’s death) is currently celebrating its ninth anniversary on Broadway at the New Amsterdam Theatre.
Today, at 73 years old, Menken shows no signs of slowing down. Disenchanted, the sequel to Enchanted for which he cowrote the music along with Stephen Schwartz (Wicked), debuted on Disney+ last fall. The fully animated feature Spellbound is expected at the end of the year, and he tells Vanity Fair that there’s another musical project in the works. But first is the live-action version of The Little Mermaid, starring Halle Bailey as Ariel and premiering in theaters on May 26, a project that led him to work on some new songs with Lin-Manuel Miranda.
“My niece went to Hunter School and I would hear about this little boy named Lin-Manuel Miranda who loved The Little Mermaid,” he recalls to Vanity Fair. “He was asking questions about it, wanted me to sign posters, and was just fanatical about it. Then one day that little boy was a writer who had a new show called In the Heights. I thought, Was he the same Lin-Manuel Miranda? And now we’re collaborating! I’ve been amazed watching what he’s become in the world.”
VF recently spoke with Menken about reworking the 1989 film’s music and the groundwork he laid to catapult the movie-musical-song catalog for new writers like Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, Bobby Lopez, Kristen-Anderson Lopez, and Miranda.
Vanity Fair: You had Little Shop of Horrors, Hercules, and Aladdin all playing at the same time in the New York City area. How does it feel to have these shows still so popular and so present?
Alan Menken: I'm used to it. I've been coming back to projects for a long time. It certainly beats the alternative by a lot. So much of what I'm doing is about my illustrious past. But you know, I still have a future and occasionally I'll talk about that in therapy. I'm very happy with what I've done. But then, there's also what's next. The most exciting thing is the new projects, and I am working on new projects.
Spellbound, tell me everything!
I can't tell you that much. Number one because it is an ever-evolving project. This is a very unusual story. It has a very ambitious, central theme. I am not going to talk about the central theme because it's all hidden in a fairy tale which involves a spell. But it's a theme that affects all of us in a contemporary way. I'm collaborating with [lyricist] Glenn Slater on the songs. Chris Montan, who was the head of music and animation at Disney from The Little Mermaid, to Tangled and Frozen is the musical supervisor. For me, it's a great return to work again in animation. Some of the team have never written musicals before. So there's been a lot of work in trying to make it more of a traditional musical and people pushing me to be more ambitious in a certain way. We are still working on it. We score in the fall. We are recording with the artists who are doing it: Rachel Zegler, Javier Bardem, and Nicole Kidman. I am going to stop there.
Can you believe Aladdin is celebrating nine years on Broadway?
Is it nine now? Wow. I feel old.
What do you think has kept it playing for so long?
It's a good musical. Tom Schumacher is as good as it gets as a theatrical producer. Aladdin is a lot of fun. The infectiousness of numbers and explosion of imagination make it really fun for an audience. You want them to want to be in that room and just have a good time.
When you put it on Broadway, you expanded the song “Friend Like Me.”
We'll add to it until you get the roof off the building. Right now with Hercules, we have “Zero To Hero.” We're gonna keep trying to inject as much fun into that as possible and raise the roof.
Turning to The Little Mermaid, the story about Lin-Manuel Miranda is fascinating because he worshipped you as a kid. He always talks about it. So I’m wondering how the collaboration for this movie actually happened?
What happened was Lin gave a lot of interviews about just that. Sean Bailey, head of film production at the studio, heard or read one of those interviews. He didn’t even ask me. He just went to Lin and asked him to work on the movie. I'm used to that. Sometimes I actually find out something of mine is happening in a press release. So this was a case where I heard I'm going to be working with Lin, I guess. We had a great time. He's really smart. He understands theater really well. He understands a lot of things really well. He's got this, as you know, stylistic brilliance that brings in hip hop and rap, and all old musical forms that help. Even though it's a composer, me, and the lyricist, Lin—when we were in the room, all those influences came to band.
What was the first song that you did and why?
We discussed with Rob Marshall what he wanted. One was the Prince Eric song, called “Wild Unchartered Waters.” Then, there was the song for Ariel when she has her legs (doesn't have a voice), and she's singing her thoughts about all the firsts she is noticing for the first time. Then, there was a number called “Scuttlebutt” for Scuttle and Sebastian. It's this harebrained [song for them] trying to figure out what's going on because they hear rumors that the prince has decided to marry. They think it must be Ariel but of course it’s Ursela in the form of Vanessa. It's all this delicious imagination. Lin’s lyrics are to die for. We wrote a fourth song called “Impossible Child” for King Triton. It didn’t remain in the film only because dramaturgically we didn’t really need it. It was so great to work with Javier Bardem on that song and people will hear it as a DVD outtake, I guess.
What about anything from Broadway?
This is a very interesting thing because it started with Beauty, then Aladdin and now Mermaid. It's not like a wheel that goes from animation through Broadway to film. It goes from animation to Broadway, then from animation to film. It seems like the animateds are the Rosetta Stone and each iteration becomes a new adaptation from that starting point. There was a song, “Her Voice” for the Broadway show. But Rob really wanted a new song for this moment of waves and all the wildness of what's out there in the ocean. [Ariel] represented that to [Prince Eric]; she being the girl who saved his life. Live action films are really a director's medium. They want to go back to what they saw in the animation and take it fresh from there. That seems to be the pattern and I go along with it. Besides the fact that clearly, everybody wants a new song for the live action film for awards consideration.
Was there anything from the original that you redid, or something about it needed to change?
There are some lyric changes in “Kiss the Girl” because people have gotten very sensitive about the idea that [Prince Eric] would, in any way, force himself on [Ariel]. We have some revisions in “Poor Unfortunate Souls” regarding lines that might make young girls somehow feel that they shouldn't speak out of turn, even though Ursula is clearly manipulating Ariel to give up her voice.
Lin has learned from Stephen Sondheim and Jonathan Larson. But he also learned from listening to your songs over the years. What did you learn from working with him?
Each of the songs were a different formula of the two of us together. “Wild Unchartered Waters” was very much in my wheelhouse as a composer with lyrics set to the music. I think it was probably the most intimidating for Lin because he felt like it was really stepping into Howard [Ashman’s] shoes. For the first time, I took the essence of a piece of music that had been in the underscore of the original Little Mermaid. It was a very lilting feel to the moment. Lin asked to make it more edgy and more a two against three tempo-wise, if you know what that means. So we gave it a lot more edge and then wrote to that which took on this incredible excitement. It's a real combo of the two but he had really influenced the musical field. On “Scuttlebutt,” I wrote a piece of music with an implied melody line. Lin took that piece of music and brilliantly rapped over it musically. So there's this whole new creation. There was a great moment when Lin sent an audio file from the bathroom of an Acela Express. He’s holding the music I wrote and singing to me the idea of what he wants while you hear a rumble of the train in the background. So, it was a very freeform collaboration. One reason people will work a lot is because they're adaptable. I like to be in the room with whoever I'm working with and start from scratch to get the essence of what that collaboration will be.
It’s interesting because you’re so often associated with Howard Ashman, but you only worked together for a short amount of time. Anytime I watch these renaissance movies (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin), I wonder what you and Howard would have produced together if he were still here. You would have been like Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Howard wrote Smile with Marvin Hamlisch. He knew he was dying as he was writing that show. It was a beautiful score. Everyone wanted it to be a light, frothy, chorus girl musical but it really was about the dark side of beauty pageants. Within that show, there is a song called “Disneyland.” Marvin had just passed away and I wanted to play the song as part of my performance at D23 that year. I wanted to make it my own as I performed it. So for the first time, I sat in front of a Howard lyric that I had never worked with before and it was a visceral experience. It is shiny on the surface, but there's so much depth in terms of what's being said; the references and the connections. I just lost it. It was so emotional to remember what it was like sitting in front of a Howard Ashman lyric. Howard and I know other shows he wanted to do.
What were they?
We got halfway into a musical about Babe Ruth. We wrote five songs. We took the material and put it aside and moved on to Little Shop instead. Howard really wanted to do a musical based on a Damon Runyon story. The movie was Big Street which people know if they saw Being the Ricardos. It was that movie that Howard wanted to adapt and we couldn't get the rights at the time. I've worked on that a number of times since then, trying to figure out what Howard would have wanted to do.
Going back to all these people you have worked with over the years, with Lin being the newest one—
I have another lyricist I am working with at the moment. Nell Benjamin.
Of Legally Blonde, the musical.
We’ve got a new project that I shouldn't be the one to announce but we’re really having a great time.
Who is your protégé?
Who is my protégé?
You got one?
No. I probably have a ton of protégés in terms of people who grew up on what I do because I see a lot of people doing the kinds of things that I do. Look at Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul and Lin-Manuel Miranda. There are so many generational writers now. And people involved in pop, wanting to be in theater now. [For example], I wrote the theme song for Rocky V. Phil Ramone and I went to London and Elton John recorded it. He said to me he really liked The Little Mermaid and he wanted to work in animation. Of course, next came The Lion King. He’s writing musicals. Sara Bareilles and a lot of other people are finding musical theater to be this great form to work in. I guess, in any way that I've influenced that, I'm proud of that.
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Princess Meg Modérateur
Âge : 28 Messages : 12846 Localisation : Dans la citadelle de Vahla Ha'Nesh. Inscription : 07/06/2013
Oh j'ai hâte de connaître les nouvelles paroles de Poor Unfortunate Souls ! ^^
Je suis un peu sceptique sur la chanson de Sébastien et Eurêka, je ne vois pas vraiment l'intérêt de placer une chanson à cet endroit de l'histoire à part pour ralentir l'action... >< Et de savoir que Sébastien n'interprètera non pas une chanson mais deux...
Oh j'ai hâte de connaître les nouvelles paroles de Poor Unfortunate Souls ! ^^
Je suis un peu sceptique sur la chanson de Sébastien et Eurêka, je ne vois pas vraiment l'intérêt de placer une chanson à cet endroit de l'histoire à part pour ralentir l'action... >< Et de savoir que Sébastien n'interprètera non pas une chanson mais deux...
3 non ? Kiss the girl, under the sea et cette nouvelle chanson
Princess Meg Modérateur
Âge : 28 Messages : 12846 Localisation : Dans la citadelle de Vahla Ha'Nesh. Inscription : 07/06/2013
Oh j'ai hâte de connaître les nouvelles paroles de Poor Unfortunate Souls ! ^^
Je suis un peu sceptique sur la chanson de Sébastien et Eurêka, je ne vois pas vraiment l'intérêt de placer une chanson à cet endroit de l'histoire à part pour ralentir l'action... >< Et de savoir que Sébastien n'interprètera non pas une chanson mais deux...
3 non ? Kiss the girl, under the sea et cette nouvelle chanson
Ah mais oui j'avais totalement zappé Kiss the Girl... xP
Voilà les paroles qui selon moi vont être modifiées dans la chanson Pauvres âmes enperdition :
Ursula a écrit:
Cette âme-là rêve d'être un squelette, L'autre cherche une amourette, Et moi qu'est-ce que je dis ? Je dis oui !
Ursula a écrit:
Ah, je peux dire que les Humains n'aiment pas les pipelettes, Qu'ils pensent que les bavardes sont assommantes ! Que lorsqu'une femme sait tenir sa langue, Elle est toujours bien plus plus charmante, Qu'après tout à quoi çà sert d'être savante ?
En plus, ils ont une Sainte horreur de la conversation, Un gentleman fait tout pour l'éviter. Mais ils se roulent et rampent aux pieds de la femme réservée, C'est la Reine du silence qui se fait aimer !
La première, parce que ça sous-entend que ce que les gens cherchent le plus souvent à obtenir sont la beauté et l'amour, ce qui semble aller à l'encontre du message que veut porter le film.
La seconde car ça sonne quand même assez misandre.
J'espère me tromper et que ce ne seront pas ces passages qui seront modifiés, ou en tous cas pas pour les raisons que j'ai évoqué, mais on verra bien...
En revoyant l'original l'autre jour je me disais justement à quel point ces paroles étaient "woke" selon la définition péjorative, dans le sens où Ursula, la méchante donc, a une vision totalement erronée des relations humaines, tellement erronée que tout le film va la contredire par la suite.
Je ne ferais pas trop de pronostics sur ce qui changera, ça peut être des changements très contextuels sur le début de la chanson quand elle dit qu'elle a mérité le nom de sorcière mais qu'aujourd'hui elle aide les cas désespérés (tout dépend du background qui lui sera donné), que des changements pour éviter de froisser une partie ou l'autre de la population.
J'espère juste que ce ne seront pas des changements aussi drastiques que pour Be Prepared dans Le Roi Lion
Halle Bailey, Melissa McCarthy, and director Rob Marshall share the tale behind making their underwater musical with a groundbreaking Disney princess.
Perhaps Halle Bailey was always destined to be a Disney princess. The studio's groundbreaking new Ariel has the "voice of an angel," according to director Rob Marshall. "She just floats through the world with tremendous grace and kindness," adds her costar Melissa McCarthy. And, as her new onscreen love interest Jonah Hauer-King puts it, "She's just a joy to be around."
But it's not only those who worked with Bailey on the upcoming live-action remake of The Little Mermaid who feel that way. The 23-year-old Atlanta native seems to have an effect on everyone around her, even while strolling through the Most Magical Place on Earth one recent March afternoon. She was in Disney World to visit the Disney Dreamers Academy, a program that seeks to create opportunities for Black teens from underrepresented communities. The program's latest celebrity ambassador — also one half of Beyoncé-blessed R&B sister duo Chloe x Halle — was walking the parks with her friends and family when Mila Rose, a bespectacled little girl in a flowery orange dress, ran up and wrapped her arms around her. So enchanted she was by Bailey, dressed simply in blue jeans and a white tank top, that she couldn't seem to break her embrace. "She just hugged me so, so tight and it honestly filled me up and made me feel good that I'm making her proud," the former Grown-ish actress recounts a day later. "I was really trying not to get so emotionally overwhelmed by it."
Video of this exchange has since gone viral on social media, speaking to the heart of Bailey's new incarnation of The Little Mermaid: On May 26, Black girls all over the world — just like Mila Rose — will get to see an Ariel who looks like them. "Little things like that, even though they seem really small, can make your whole day," Bailey says of the viral moment. "It makes it feel like all of this hard work, all of this sacrifice that I put into this film, is really paying off."
A tail as old as time
The Little Mermaid is just the latest animated Disney classic to be reimagined. "We have a number of irons in the fire at any given time," Sean Bailey, president of Disney Live Action, explains of the studio's upcoming slate of adaptations, which includes Snow White, Hercules, Mufasa, and now Moana. "They move forward when the right mix of ingredients comes together." The executive says one of those ingredients was Marshall, who started his Hollywood directing career with The Wonderful World of Disney version of Annie on ABC in 1999.
The filmmaker fell in love with The Little Mermaid after catching it in a movie theater with his long-time producing (and life) partner John DeLuca in 1989, and credits it with sparking "the resurgence of musicals on film." So when Disney approached the couple — also responsible for the studio's 2018 sequel Mary Poppins Returns — about crafting a new version of the story, they dove in head first.
"It's a very emotional story," Marshall says from his Long Island, N.Y., home in late March, one week away from finishing the film in its entirety. "We were able to take the beauty of what's there in the original film and the Hans Christian Andersen tale and really bring more depth."
Andersen felt like an "ungainly child all his life," DeLuca says of the author, who first published his mermaid story in 1837. "Even as he grew older, he never felt he fit in." As an adult, the author became attracted to another man — who didn't return his affections — and eventually married a woman. In Ariel-speak, the producer says, "He was never going to be part of the world." Marshall feels all of Andersen's fairy tales are essentially about outsiders, including the story that would inspire The Little Mermaid. "Even though it was written in the 1800s, it seems very modern, about this girl who wants something more, feels displaced, doesn't feel like everyone around her," explains the director. "Through courage and her own convictions and her own passions, she gives up so much to be where she really feels she belongs."
In Marshall's new film, that restlessness stems from more than just longing for life beyond King Triton's (Javier Bardem) underwater domain. With her red locs and darker skin, Halle Bailey's Ariel doesn't look like most of her multicultural family. "Rob's vision was to really give a deeper dive into Ariel's heart, into her brain, and allow us to see more of that gumption and passion and freedom, and reason for the things she was doing. Like in the grotto," Bailey says, referring to that classic scene where Ariel pours over her "gadgets and gizmos aplenty." "You see a bit more of her curiosity."
Can you feel the love tonight?
The first time Hauer-King met Bailey wasn't like Prince Eric and Ariel's oceanside meet-cute, but it had its own kind of magic: The Cambridge-educated Brit, who previously played Laurie in PBS' 2017 Little Women miniseries, initially met eyes with his future princess during his final Little Mermaid screen test. It was the culmination of a process that began with hundreds of hopefuls eyeing the male lead — including Harry Styles. Marshall confirms he spoke with the "As It Was" superstar about playing Eric once upon a time, but the future Don't Worry Darling and My Policeman headliner "really felt like he wanted to go off and do the movies that he ended up doing, which were sort of darker." Instead, the director landed on Hauer-King, who came with a "sweetness" and "deep passion."
Disney established an entire set in London for the final audition round, complete with trailers for the actors, call sheets, costume fittings, and Marshall's Oscar-winning Memoirs of a Geisha cinematographer Dion Beebe behind the camera. Hauer-King remembers Bailey's warmth, but three other guys were also vying for the Eric part. "I didn't take her being kind to me as any indication," the 27-year-old recalls. "I just assumed she was a lovely person and would've done that for anyone."
Minutes after returning to his trailer from the audition, he heard a knock at his door. It was Bailey coming to wish him luck and share her hopes of seeing him again. Hauer-King says he was "traumatized" by his own flight of ideas that erupted from that exchange: "I thought, 'What does it all mean? Is that an indication? Did she knock on everyone's door?'" Bailey, as it turned out, did not. It really was a sign. "We became very, very close friends — and still are," he now says.
Eric feels a kindred soul within Ariel, and his life on land is a mirror of her own under the sea. Like the mermaid, the prince has a single parent of a different ethnicity: Queen Selina, a new character added to this version, played by Harry Potter and the Cursed Child's Noma Dumezweni. "It's a lovely balance," Dumezweni remarks. "It's the sense of these babies being two outsiders of their origin story."
Eric also shares Ariel's thirst for adventure, which hasn't been quenched inside the walls of his island castle. In a new ballad, "Wild Uncharted Waters," Hauer-King sings of Eric's struggle to find himself amid the familial pressures of becoming the kingdom's future ruler. "He wants to see the other edge of that horizon line, wherever it may lead," says the song's lyricist, Lin-Manuel Miranda, who worked with 1989 Little Mermaid composer Alan Menken on a total of three new songs for the live-action movie, including Ariel's "For the First Time" and "Scuttlebutt" for the seagull Scuttle and crab Sebastian, voiced by Awkwafina and Daveed Diggs. (Menken's original Little Mermaid collaborator, Disney legend Howard Ashman, sadly died in 1991 during the making of Beauty and the Beast.) "Eric is endlessly drawn to the sea and Ariel's endlessly drawn to land," Miranda continues. "So where does that get us?"
The scare necessities
Ariel's story clearly hits different notes 34 years after Jodi Benson gave voice to the mermaid on screen, but Bailey stresses "all the beautiful elements that struck us when we were younger are still there" in this blend of live-action and CG, including familiar characters Scuttle, Sebastian, and the fish Flounder (Jacob Tremblay). And, of course, there's one other crucial element: a certain unfortunate soul.
Melissa McCarthy, 52, used to watch The Little Mermaid endlessly with the kids she once nannied in her 20s in New York prior to becoming an actor. Decades later, the Bridesmaids and Nine Perfect Strangers star found herself exploring other facets to her favorite Disney villain, the half-squid Ursula. Menken confirms a fun fact about the animated character: The drag queen Divine (who McCarthy happened to emulate for a 2011 EW cover story photo shoot) was the inspiration behind the sea witch. In assuming the role, McCarthy says she "100 percent" used drag as an influence. "There's a drag queen that lives in me. I'm always right on the verge of going full-time with her," she says, having started her career performing as the drag persona Miss Y in Manhattan clubs.
The new film refreshes Ursula's origin story to make the tentacled sorceress the estranged sister of King Triton, a familial twist first introduced in the 2008 Broadway musical version of the animated movie. DeLuca calls Ursula the "black sheep" of the family, noting the pain that comes with it. "She's the villain, but there's such an edge to her," McCarthy adds. "She's been put in this lair. It's like she's had too many martinis alone. Her friends are eels. That is a woman who has seen it, been in it, dug her way back out. All my references are terrible, but I kept thinking, 'Many a Pall Mall has this woman had.'"
Having been through isolation at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the mistress of comedy jokes she never wants to go that Method for a role ever again: "To keep the humor and the sadness and the edginess to Ursula is everything I want in a character — and frankly, everything I want in a drag queen."
"Everyone's seen the trailer, and now you know how good Halle's gonna be, 'cause she sounds incredible," Miranda says of the recording artist's rendition of "Part of Your World." "But no one's ready for Melissa McCarthy." The actress, who admits singing once petrified her, performed Ursula's signature number, "Poor Unfortunate Souls," (now made more famous by a cover by Titus Burgess, a.k.a. Broadway's first Sebastian) with an orchestra in London for the cast recording. "She brings all of the delicious camp from the original, but then also is just scary," Miranda adds. "If that's your favorite song, you're going to be happy."
A whole new world
Though he was Oscar-nominated for directing the 2002 adaptation of Chicago, Marshall doesn't believe he was ready to make The Little Mermaid until now. He and DeLuca previously dealt with mermaids in 2011's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and featured an underwater bubble bath sequence in Mary Poppins Returns. With The Little Mermaid, however, there are multiple numbers, like "Under the Sea," set… well, under the sea. "It was quite daunting to think, 'How are we gonna create an underwater musical?'" he admits. (DeLuca says it was more like "150 percent daunting.") "We know the Esther Williams underwater musicals where they're holding their breath. This is a whole different thing," Marshall continues. "The whole idea of how we're gonna do this was so complicated."
DeLuca says they spent about two months in Los Angeles with screenwriter David Magee developing an outline that broke down their plan of attack. This was followed by an elaborate previsualization phase, during which all the underwater scenes — and some above-water scenes — were meticulously choreographed and staged to determine exactly how they would move the actors about without gravity. "It's almost like we created a movie before we filmed the movie," Marshall remarks. When the actors finally got to set in London, just before the pandemic hit in 2020, they had weeks of rehearsals to execute their plan.
Bailey remembers spending most of filming in a tuning fork, a mechanism that locks an actor into a harness that then can spin and rotate to emulate swimming. (Disney used this on Angelina Jolie for flying sequences in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil.) Other times she was on wires or a combination of both. "It was an intense routine of having to be in the gym by like 4 a.m., working out before you go to stunts, and then you're on the harness and in that world in the air for hours at a time and your core is burning all day, and your legs and your arms," Bailey says. But it was worth it. "I loved being able to feel like I could fly."
"It was like [being] at Disney Parks in the rides," Bardem exclaims. "You have to be in shape because those arms have to be there. And most importantly, you have to have a strong core. You really have to do some gymnastics." That said, he was relieved to know he wouldn't be as shirtless as Triton is in the animated movie. "I'm not Dwayne Johnson. I'm not Brad Pitt," the actor, who instead donned armor as the underwater king, says with a booming laugh.
The physical demands were also an adjustment for McCarthy. "Rob wanted me to experience the tentacles and the space I really took up," she says. "So I had eight dancers around me, each one puppeteering a 10- or 12-foot tentacle. I would swoop to the left and all of these dancers would come with me. Then if I'd reach out for something, one of my tentacles really would go out and bring something back."
In lieu of facial capture, which would mean planting those green dots all over the actors' faces to record their expressions, Marshall turned to the Anyma, which he cheekily admits is an unfortunate name "because it sounds too close to something else." The technology is a system used to help make Josh Brolin's Thanos in Avengers: Endgame and Will Smith's Genie in Guy Ritchie's 2019 live-action Aladdin. As Marshall explains, the Anyma allowed the production to "film a portion of an actor and then technology would take over. We could capture their faces with lots of camera light if we needed to do something that was just too complicated technically to make work moving through the water."
Bailey did get to shoot in actual water, however. Maybe not 13 hours a day, as she was previously quoted as saying ("I'm like, 'Did I really say 13 hours?'"), but the cast shot portions of The Little Mermaid on location in Italy, including pieces on the beach after Ariel saves Eric from drowning. The water is where Bailey found her confidence to be the lead of a large-scale Hollywood movie. "There's something so healing and peaceful about being near the ocean, and something spiritual about it too," says the actress, who has considered the ocean to be her happy place since she was little. "I just felt like I was getting purified, you know?"
Reflection
Returning to life on land since filming ended has presented its own challenges for Bailey. When the first footage of her as the new Ariel arrived at D23 last September, it sparked a whole new wave of feedback, some as heartfelt as Black families sharing videos of their children's joyous reactions to the trailer, and some as toxic as racist remarks made online. Bailey acknowledges "there have been a lot of different opinions and comments" about the movie so far, and she's made her mental health a priority because of it.
"I just have to block out the noise," she says. "I don't really see a lot of the comments. I choose to not read them, or delete Twitter, things like that, and just accept this moment for what it is, which is a big, beautiful blessing and opportunity for me."
Bailey continues to focus on the good, which includes moments like meeting Mila Rose and seeing the impact she's having on others in person, not just through the lens of the internet. "That's what keeps me going and my head on straight and focused," Bailey says of her interaction with the young fan. "At the end of the day, that moment right there just confirmed that's everything this movie is supposed to be."
She adds, "The good outweighs all the bad."
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Âge : 28 Messages : 12846 Localisation : Dans la citadelle de Vahla Ha'Nesh. Inscription : 07/06/2013
Vidéo autour de la collaboration entre Lin-Manuel Miranda et Alan Menken, avec quelques petits aperçus des nouvelles chansons !
Quelques révélations/confirmations par Entertainment Weekly : Ursula sera la sœur de Triton (comme dans la version Broadway), et la Reine Selina est la mère d'Eric.
Ariel and Eric's love story begins with a casual near-death experience.
Played by Grammy nominee Halle Bailey, the titular Little Mermaid of Disney's live-action/CG reimagining saves the land-dwelling prince (Jonah Hauer-King) from drowning in a shipwreck one dark and stormy night.
EW has an exclusive look at this scene, as well as nine other photos from the film (set to release on May 26) as part of our latest cover story.
Washed ashore
The aftermath of the shipwreck sees Ariel carrying an unconscious Eric to shore. It's a moment that further sparks the mer-maiden's fascination with the above world and sets the handsome royal on a mission to find his mysterious savior.
Treading water
The Little Mermaid director Rob Marshall isn't afraid to get wet on location in Italy if it means getting the right shot.
Finding Eric's voice
Hauer-King says Prince Eric is a more fully dimensional character in the live-action film compared to what we see in the animated original of 1989.
"We all know him as this charming, romantic, charismatic guy in the cartoon, but we wanted to go deeper," the actor explains. "I really understood him as this very adventurous but quite restless spirit who didn't feel fully at home in his own home, and felt quite trapped and restricted behind the four walls of the castle, and was really about looking outwards rather than inwards."
King of the seas
Javier Bardem plays King Triton, ruler of his oceanic domain and father of Ariel, his youngest daughter. The above world is considered off limits to mer-folk, though Bardem tells EW Triton's frustrations with Ariel are more over the fear of losing his child.
"She's going to leave the nest very soon, and that relationship between the love and fear for her wellbeing had to be very present in the relationship," the actor says. "I love that idea because that's so relatable for every father."
Twisted sister
Triton's sister — and Ariel's aunt — is the sea witch Ursula, played by Melissa McCarthy. Powered by magic, the tentacled enchantress manipulates Ariel into striking a bargain, one that will give her legs to walk on land in exchange for her voice.
Queen Selina
EW has an exclusive first look at Harry Potter and the Cursed Child star Noma Dumezweni as Queen Selina, mother of Prince Eric.
"It's this sense of the babies being two outsiders of their origin story and then finding each other," Dumezweni says. "So Eric being mothered and grown by a woman who looks like me on an island and you hear that story, and then you look at Ariel and her family and she being the outsider of that. There's that sense of, 'We recognize each other when we know what each other's been through.'"
Finding her footing
Multiple new songs were composed for this new Little Mermaid, with music by the animated film's composer Alan Menken and lyrics by Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. One such song is "For the First Time," a new piece for Ariel to sing as she tours the above world kingdom with Eric.
Kindred spirits
Not only does Hauer-King describe Ariel and Eric as "kindred spirits," he sees himself that way with Bailey. "Speaking about her personally, I could not have done [the film] without her," he says. "She was such a supportive and kind presence."
He adds, "We became very, very close friends — and still are."
Siren sounds
Daveed Diggs voices the crab Sebastian in The Little Mermaid. Here he's seen with Miranda, who also composed lyrics for an original song called "Scuttlebutt," a duet between Diggs' Sebastian and Awkwafina's seagull Scuttle.
"It's the most deliciously ADHD runaway train of thought," Miranda says of the tune. "There's tangents inside of tangents."
Entretien avec Noma Dumezweni et Jonah Hauer-King :
EW has a first look at Tony nominee Noma Dumezweni, who played Hermione Granger on Broadway and in London's West End, as Queen Selina.
Among the distinct changes made to Disney's live-action retelling of The Little Mermaid is the story of Prince Eric, played by Jonah Hauer-King (PBS' Little Women, BBC One's World on Fire). "The role of Eric in the animated film — I'm sure the original creators would agree to this — it's not fully fleshed out," director Rob Marshall has told EW. "It's sort of a wooden, classic prince character with not a lot going on."
One of the ways Marshall, producer John DeLuca, and screenwriter David Magee chose to address this was by introducing a new character to the tale: Eric's mother. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and The Undoing star Noma Dumezweni makes her debut as Queen Selina in EW's exclusive first-look photo.
Both Ariel (Halle Bailey) and Eric come from single-parent multicultural households. (Javier Bardem, who plays King Triton, told Marshall when offered the role, "If the father is allowed to speak with a Latin accent, I'm here!") Dumezweni feels that dynamic creates a "lovely balance" for the characters.
"It's this sense of these babies being two outsiders of their origin story and then finding each other," she explains in EW's Little Mermaid cover story. "That's how I understood it and how Rob described it. So Eric being mothered and grown by a woman who looks like me on an island and you hear that story, and then you look at Ariel and her family and she being the outsider of that — there's that sense of, 'We recognize each other when we know what each other's been through.'"
"We all know [Eric] as this charming, romantic, charismatic guy in the cartoon, but we wanted to go deeper," Hauer-King elaborates. "I really understood him as this very adventurous but quite restless spirit who didn't feel fully at home in his own home, and felt quite trapped and restricted behind the four walls of the castle, and was really about looking outwards rather than inwards. What was really special about it was that not only applied to him, but it really informed his relationship with Ariel."
Dumezweni previously worked with Marshall and DeLuca on Mary Poppins Returns, playing bank secretary Penny Farthing in the 2018 film. The two-time Laurence Olivier Award winner and one-time Tony nominee says that was her first big movie — when she was given the chance to reunite with the filmmaking team on The Little Mermaid, she was aghast.
"I could sense this was big," she says. "My observation of what they've created and the tiny bit that I have observed is a thing of absolute beauty."
Dumezweni filmed most of her scenes with her on-screen son on the Italian island of Sardinia. Even now, she still considers Hauer-King to be one of her "theater babies," young actors she's become close with over the years through various theater and screen projects. "I did text him when the [Little Mermaid] trailer came, going, 'Are you ready? You'd better be ready, 'cause this is f---ing huge,'" she recalls.
Dumezweni still can't get over the scope of The Little Mermaid, which makes her appreciate all the twists and turns her career has taken. She credits the Harry Potter stage play and HBO limited series The Undoing as having tremendous impacts on her trajectory as an actor.
"I'm gonna be 54 this year," she says with pride. "People keep telling me not to say my age, but, no, I just need to let people know that whatever you think is supposed to be the thing is not necessarily the thing. Don't stop your imagination and limitation. Just keep open."
Le réalisateur a également confirmé que Harry Styles avait bel et bien été envisagé pour le rôle, mais que ce dernier a préféré se concentrer sur des projets plus sombres et non musicaux.
Fans were just as curious about the casting for Disney's live-action The Little Mermaid as Ariel is about whozits, whatzits, and thingamabobs. After five-time Grammy-nominated singer Halle Bailey landed the lead role, all eyes turned towards Prince Eric, which was looking like it was going to go to another music icon, Harry Styles.
Director Rob Marshall confirms for EW's Little Mermaid cover story that he did, in fact, meet with the "As It Was" singer and explains why that casting ultimately didn't happen.
"We met with him. He was lovely. What a wonderful guy," Marshall says of Styles, 29. "But at the end of the day, he really felt like he wanted to go off and do the movies that he ended up doing, which were sort of darker."
Styles ended up starring in two movies in 2022: Don't Worry Darling with Florence Pugh and Chris Pine, and My Policeman with David Dawson and Emma Corrin.
"For a lot of young musical people like Harry, you're trying to carve your way and you don't wanna be seen as a singer, necessarily," Marshall, who's directed such well-regarded movie musicals as Chicago and Into the Woods, continues. "That's why he was really looking to do something not in the musical genre, to really stretch himself. It was really a fun idea to play with, but in the end, I always think things happen for a reason. I'm so happy to have two young, new people in the film."
While Bailey, 23, has been singing all her adult life as one half of R&B duo Chloe x Halle with sister Chlöe Bailey, Marshall says, "We don't know her as an actor." Bailey appeared on the TV show Grown-ish and in the film Last Holiday, but The Little Mermaid marks her first starring role in a big Hollywood production.
Jonah Hauer-King, 27, ultimately landed the Prince Eric part opposite her. A British actor who's been consistently working across various projects — including the PBS Little Women miniseries — but hasn't yet had a breakout moment, Hauer-King was immediately likable in the audition, says Marshall.
"I'm always looking for the person who's deeply connected to a part," the director adds. "The words come off the page [and] all of a sudden they're in his mouth, and it sounds true and real. You believe the person."
Personnellement je ne suis toujours pas emballé par le design d'Ursula, il manque ce coté camp. Aucune drag queen n'oserait monter sur scène avec ce makeup...les ongles sont trop courts, les accessoires pas assez extravagants, elle n'est pas assez violette, le visage est trop lisse. Entertainment Weekly avait d'ailleurs fait mieux avec Melissa McCarthy pour un photoshoot de 2011 où le makeup de drag queen est PARFAIT. Avec tout ce budget je ne comprends vraiment pas les choix artistiques de Disney, je pense que avec le même budget des fans feraient largement mieux.
Par contre, j'adore les tentacules lumineuses. Mon seul espoir pour ce film reste Halle Bailey dont le talent de chanteuse ne peut être nié et qui est très charismatique je trouve. Le fait que Disney l'a autant utilisé sans la soutenir pendant la contreverse et les attaques racistes pour qu'au final le point faible du film soit sa cinématographie et ses choix artistiques dignes d'un film sur la Première Guerre Mondiale (sombre et terne) me choque. En parlant de son personnage je ne comprends toujours pas le choix de la suppresion des coquillages pour qu'ils soient remplacés par des écailles mais bref...
J'adore le personnage de la mère d'Eric qui était phénoménale dans Cursed Child, du coup hate de voir son role. Je ne sais pas si le fait que Harry Styles ne fasse pas partie du film est une bonne chose ou pas finalement. L'acteur qu'ils ont choisi est très charismatique sur insta et les photoshoots press mais encore une fois le styling qu'il a dans le film, surtout des cheveux, ne le met pas en avant.