Disney’s 100th anniversary party is going swimmingly with a new 30-second trailer for the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. This latest Little Mermaid trailer, which the House of Mouse dropped today, teased a couple of familiar faces: Ursula the Sea Witch and Prince Eric.
The new trailer gives us a closer look at Ariel (Halle Bailey) taking us on a mini tour of Atlantica, introducing us to a colorful variety of mermaids and other sea creatures, including a puffer fish and a school of jellyfish. Then in the surface world, she tries to get her first kiss from Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) in a recreation of the “Kiss The Girl” sequence from the original animated version of The Little Mermaid. The end of the trailer teased the wicked face of Ursula, played by the ever-delightful Melissa McCarthy, though the shot was a little too dark for some people to get a closer look at her eyes.
In the trailer’s comment sections on Twitter and YouTube, fans praised McCarthy for giving her best cackle for Ursula, which they pointed out is quite similar to that of Pat Carroll, whose voice for the sea witch made her an iconic Disney villain upon the animated film’s release in 1989. Carroll passed away in July 2022.
Meanwhile, the live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid has garnered unwarranted controversy from some corners since the casting of Bailey as the leading mermaid in 2019, because she is Black instead of white, as Ariel was in the original film.
The Little Mermaid releases in theaters on May 26.
