There’s Something Fishy About ‘The Little Mermaid’ Trailer: Watch
The debut trailer for the upcoming live action film based on The Little Mermaid dropped online March 9—but it isn't for the movie you're thinking of.
Fans of Hans Christian Andersen's bittersweet fairy tale lit up when a trailer for a movie called The Little Mermaid appeared online Thursday, but moments into the clip it was made clear that this is a very different take on the enchanting story.
The trailer for 2017's The Little Mermaid—which features famous YouTube toddler Claire Crosby, adored for her precocious and perfectly pitched Disney song covers—plays instead like a hokey, low budget TV movie cross between Water For Elephants and FairyTale: A True Story.
In the Conglomerate Media and Kingsway-produced film, the mermaid, named Elizabeth (Downtown Abbey's Poppy Drayton), is trapped by the ringmaster of a small town Mississippi circus, where she is put on display nightly and forced to perform as her soul has been stolen from her. Learning the truth, reporter sent to investigate her authenticity (The Chronicles of Narnia's William Moseley) and his younger sister embark on an adventure to save the mermaid and restore her spirit.
Watch below:
Meanwhile, Universal Pictures and Working Title's Little Mermaid movie—the one Sofia Coppola was originally set to direct before backing out in 2015 over creative differences—is still in development after losing its star, Chloe Grace Moretz, back in September 2016.
Of course when it comes to The Little Mermaid, aside from Andersen's original 1837 story, Disney's 1989 animated musical, which launched the company's animation renaissance in the 1990s, is the most iconic take on the fish tale.
Hot on the fins of their live action Cinderella, Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast remakes, Disney also greenlit an adaptation of The Little Mermaid, currently in development with Moana's Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cartoon classic's original songwriter Alan Menken, in late 2016.
Are you ready to return "Under the Sea" not one, not two, but three times? Let's hope one of the forthcoming movies about the mythical underwater princess is worth diving into. And if all else fails, we'll always have this little slice of micro-cinematic magic...
...as well as Lindsay Lohan's offer to play the red-headed, half-human, half-fish heroine:
Celebrities Who Have Voiced Animated Characters: