Earlier this month, while attending the Deauville Film Festival, where she received the festival’s Rising Star Award, Chloë Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising) revealed that she has dropped out of all her future film projects and is focusing her attention on producing programs for television.
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“So I pulled the plug on all my movies because I want to reassess who I am and find myself within my roles again,” Moretz told THR. “I’m realizing that I can slow down.”
That means Moretz will not star in The Little Mermaid, Universal Pictures’ live-action adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s 1837 fairy tale. Last November, she landed the coveted title role, and in interviews that took place a month afterwards, she expressed a genuine excitement for the opportunity.
However, this won’t be the first big departure for Universal’s The Little Mermaid. Academy Award-nominated director Sofia Coppola (Lost In Translation) had been set to helm the project, but she left in June 2015 due to “creative differences” with the studio. As of last we knew, Universal was courting Rebecca Thomas (Nobody Gives a Damn, Electrick Children), a director known for her independent short and feature-lenth films, to man the ship, though nothing was officially announced.
Universal’s The Little Mermaid is supposed to be truer to Anderson’s original story; however, most people are more familiar with Disney’s animated take on the material. In both versions the mermaid gives up her singing voice to a sea witch in exchange for a human form so that she can win over her Prince, but the original fable doesn’t have a happy ending.
