Rob Marshall (‘The Little Mermaid’): “‘At the bottom of the sea’, which is a sailor’s song, is better where we put it”

In Rob Marshall’s curriculum we find ourselves in musicals like ‘Chicago’, ‘Nine’, ‘Into the Woods’ or ‘Mary Poppins Returns’ and in theater ‘Cabaret’, ‘Hairspray’ or ‘Chess’. This year the director repeats in the genre with ‘The Little Mermaid’, Disney’s live-action remake of its animated classic.

Of course, even respecting the original material, the tone between the two has changed a lot, looking for a much more realistic and adult approach and of course, entire plots of the animated film have been left out: “What we tried to do was pick up everything we really liked about the original”Marshall told us during the promotional tour, “We tried to keep all the important pieces for the film and then reimagine it in live action.”

For example, chef Louis and his attempts to cook poor Sebastian didn’t make the cut or the script, why? “This movie has a different genre and there are things that didn’t sit well when adapted. The whole Chef Louis kitchen part would never have worked in this movie for two reasons: First is that That whole scene with the crab running to avoid being cut up is from an animation typical of comedy cartoons, it would never have worked in a live action; Also, it’s a break in the middle of the movie and what we wanted is for the story to move forward. It works in the animation, but not here.”

Although we’ve run out of that iconic sequence, if you open your eyes wide and pay close attention, you can see the character: “There’s an easter egg,” Marshall reveals, “If you look closely there is a man dressed as Chef Louis in the movie, in the kitchen”.

New songs

In addition to almost all the classics composed by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman (‘Las hijas de Tritón’ is not there), the soundtrack for the new Little Mermaid includes three new songs, although at least 4 were filmed, but Javier Bardem’s is not included in the final cut, how did the actor take it? “Bardem is a true gentleman, an elegant man, he understood that it was in favor of the film. What happens is that the song brought us to the end and he knew that we had the most important part there, it is gold. […] The outcome was annoying. You obviously want to protect the ending.”

Ashman died in 1991, so to help Menken with the lyrics for the new songs they turned to Lin-Manuel Miranda and together they made “the perfect team” according to the director:

“I think it was due to Lin-Manuel’s admiration for the film. I think it’s the film that aroused his interest in composing as a child, that’s how important it is to him, I mean, his son’s name is Sebastián. You can see how much it means to him. They worked together perfectly. John DeLuca, David Magee and I found places where new songs could fit. Then we call them and show them where it would help us to introduce new songs to improve the experience. It’s interesting to think that Eric doesn’t have a song in the original movie and Ariel only has one, one! We saw moments in which more could be contributed to the group. It was exciting”.

‘The Little Mermaid’ hits theaters on May 26. Starring Halle Bailey, Jonah Hauer-King, Melissa McCarthy, Bardem, Noma Dumezweni, Daveed Diggs, Awkwafina, and Jacob Tremblay. You can read our review here.