Original The Little Mermaid Director Calls Out Live-Action Remake

The Little Mermaid director John Musker is making waves about Disney’s live-action remake. 

In an interview with Spanish outlet El Pais, the prolific animator, who co-directed the 1989 original with his longtime collaborator Ron Clements, criticized the studio’s habit of redoing and re-imagining its animated classics like 2019’s The Lion King and 2023’s Little Mermaid. 

“Companies are always like, ‘How do we reduce our risk? They like this,right? We’ll just do it again and sell it to them in a different form.’Or they think, ‘Well, we could make it better,’” the retired Disney animator said. “I think there was aquestion even with The Little Mermaid. They didn’t play up thefather-daughter story, and that was the heart of the movie, in a way.”

Musker also critiqued the lifelike redesigns of the formerly cartoon critters, including crabby crustacean Sebastian (voiced by Daveed Diggs) and Ariel’s fish friend Flounder (Jacob Tremblay).

“And the crab — you could look at live animals in a zoo and they havemore expression, like with The Lion King,” Musker continued, referring to Jon Favreau’s photo-realistic remake. “That’s one of the basic things about Disney, is the appeal. That’s what animation does best. If you do something that is animated, take advantage of all its qualities and imagination.”

He then echoed recent comments by Disney CEO Bob Iger, who described Disney as an “entertainment-first company” in an interview with CNBC’s Squawk on the Street. While Disney aims to continue to appeal to a “very diverse audience” with positive messages, Iger said, “infusing messaging as a sort of number one priority in our films and TV shows is not what we’re up to.” 

“We weren’t trying to be woke, although I understand the criticism. Theclassic Disney films didn’t start out trying to have a message. Theywanted you to get involved in the characters and the story and theworld, and I think that’s still the heart of it,” Musker said. “You don’t have toexclude agendas, but you have to first create characters who yousympathize with and who are compelling. I think they need to do a coursecorrection a bit in terms of putting the message secondary, behindentertainment and compelling story and engaging characters.”

Between 1986 and 2016, Musker and Ron Clements co-directed Disney animated movies The Great Mouse Detective, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, Treasure Planet, The Princess and the Frog, and Moana. The latter was released in 2016 but was the most-streamed movie of 2023 in the U.S., explaining why Disney will release the CG-animated Moana 2 in theaters this fall before translating the original movie into a live-action adaptation starring Dwayne Johnson in 2026.

“I hope that they do it well,” Musker said of the live-action Moana, “but we have nothing to do with it.”

Disney’s live-action Little Mermaid starred Halle Bailey in the title role opposite Javier Bardem as her father, King Triton, Jonah Hauer-King as the human Prince Eric, and Melissa McCarthy as the scheming sea witch Ursula. Featuring new and original music by original Little Mermaid composer Alan Menken and Moana‘s Lin Manuel-Miranda, the remake splashed into theaters over Memorial Day weekend in 2023 and grossed $569.6 million at the global box office.