Disney has been teasing us with a lot of The Little Mermaid live-action remake stuff lately.
We’ve got most of the cast named (with a new face recently revealed) and intel from Melissa McCarthy that filming has begun .
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But when it comes to the actual story, we were recently teased with some shocking information that fans may or may not like.
And, of course, it all has to do with Ursula.
It’s been almost two years since Disney announced the live-action remake of *The Little Mermaid*.
For those living quite literally under the sea, the story follows Ariel, a mermaid, who makes a deal with a sea witch in order to achieve true love with Prince Eric, the human that she loves.
But, alas, things go awry.
So far, most of the cast has been rounded out, starting with Halle Bailey, who was cast as Ariel.
Sadly, this casting decision was criticized since Ariel is light-skinned in the original film.
People even began tweeting the extremely hurtful hashtag: “#NotMyAriel”. Thankfully, a lot of this criticism has died down with time.
The rest of the cast includes Daveed Diggs as Sebastian, Javier Bardem as King Triton, Jacob Tremblay as Flounder, Awkwafina as Scuttle, and Jonah Hauer-King as Prince Eric.
A lot of speculation went into the casting of Prince Eric, with fans even rallying online for their top pics.
This included everyone from Shawn Mendes to Harry Styles to Michael B. Jordan.
The most recent person to join the cast is *Get Even* star, Jessica Alexander.
So far, her role is undisclosed. And then, we have Melissa McCarthy who has been cast as the devious Ursula.
While the film is still in the early stages of production, she has talked a bit about the role.
“It’s been an absolute blast,” she said while on *The Ellen DeGeneres Show*.
“Stepping into the world of Rob Marshall, it’s like a fever dream. I just went to London for a week, I was like, ‘I don’t get to go to dance camp for a week.’ All day he’s like, ‘Do you want to slide down this 40-foot clam shell?’ I’m like, ‘Yes! Of course I do. What are you, crazy?’ It’s been wildly creative,” she shared .
Like many of Disney’s live-action films, *The Little Mermaid* plans to keep a lot of the same magic from the original film.
Original film composer, Alan Menken, for example, will be working with Lin-Manuel Miranda to breathe new life into the songs written by the late great Howard Ashman.
But not everything is staying true to the original story.
In a Deadline exclusive, it’s been revealed that there are some serious changes coming to the storyline.
For the first time ever, Ursula is playing Ariel’s aunt. This is a big change to the iconic evil villain.
In the original story, there was no mention of a family connection between Ariel or Ariel’s father King Triton.
Ursula was simply the sea witch, determined to trick Ariel and replace King Triton as king of the seas.
This certainly isn’t the first time Ursula had character changes, though.
In deleted scenes from the animated version, it was revealed that there was an early concept idea for Ursula to be King Triton’s sister.
For some reason, this never came to fruition.
If we go back even further to the original fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, we’ll find even more surprising differences.
For one, Ursula wasn’t a bad character in the original story.
She had a much smaller role and her name wasn’t even Ursula.
She was simply known as “the Sea Witch.” She played a neutral role in the story by helping Ariel be with her prince.
With Disney’s modern-day inclusion of family ties, we’re interested to see if this will change anything about Ursula’s dynamic as the villain.
Maybe we’ll even see a reconciliation between the family members in the end? Guess we’ll just have to wait and see!
What do you think about Disney making changes to Ursula? Let us know in the comments!
