Disney’s Live-Action The Little Mermaid Swims to 2023 Release Date

Disney’s The Little Mermaid will be part of your world when the new movie surfaces in theaters in May 2023. The live-action re-imagining of the 1989 animated classic, directed by Rob Marshall and starring Halle Bailey as undersea princess Ariel, is among the two-dozen titles dated by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures on Friday. After wrapping filming on the remake over the summer, Disney’s live-action Little Mermaid swims to Memorial Day weekend with an opening day set for May 26, 2023.

The studio previously opened its live-action Aladdin, starring Will Smith as Genie, over the four-day Memorial Day holiday weekend to gross a lifetime total of $1.051 billion in 2019. Disney’s Cruella, a live-action prequel starring Emma Stone as Hundred and One Dalmatians villain Cruella de Vil, also opened over the Memorial Day weekend in May to gross a global $223.6 million with a simultaneous release in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access.

Bailey (Grown-ish) leads a cast that includes Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men) as Ariel’s father, King Triton, Daveed Diggs (Hamilton) as the voice of the crabby Sebastian, Jacob Tremblay (Disney-Pixar’s Luca) as the voice of Ariel’s fish friend Flounder, Awkwafina (Marvel’s Shang-Chi) as the voice of Scuttle, Jonah Hauer-King (TV’s Little Women) as Prince Eric, and Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids) as the sea witch Ursula. 

Bailey revealed the first look at her live-action Ariel when filming wrapped in July.

Marshall (Chicago, Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Mary Poppins Returns) directs from a script by Jane Goldman (Stardust, X-Men: First Class) and David Magee (Finding Neverland, Life of Pi). Marshall produces with John DeLuca (Disney’s Into the Woods), Marc Platt (La La Land, Dear Evan Hansen), and Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton, Disney’s Encanto). 

Alan Menken, the eight-time Academy Award-winning composer and songwriter behind the original Little Mermaid with lyricist Howard Ashman, returns for the live-action movie. Menken previously confirmed the creation of four new songs with Miranda.

“That was so cool,” Awkwafina recently told ComicBook about her experience going under the sea on Little Mermaid, her next big-budget Disney production after Marvel Studios’ blockbuster Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. “I mean, each one of these experiences is mind blowing in their own respect and very special, and for that one, it was so cool to work with Rob Marshall and Lin-Manuel. And I think that the world’s going to really, really like it.”

Disney’s The Little Mermaid opens in theaters on May 26, 2023.