The greatest movies never made: Sofia Coppola’s dark version of ‘The Little Mermaid’
Even the most cynical of cinephiles have fallen victim to occasionally admitting the brilliance of a Disney film or two, particularly the glory of The Little Mermaid. The 1989 original animated movie based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson featured some of the best characters and songs in any Disney film; take, for instance, Sebastian and his absolute banger, ‘Under the Sea’.
In the 21st century, there have been some truly reprehensible live-action versions of tales that informed classic Disney movies, like Robert Zemeckis’ Pinocchio and Tim Burton’s Dumbo. In fact, even The Little Mermaid got the modern live-action treatment from Rob Marshall in 2023, starring Halle Bailey, Javier Bardem and Melissa McCarthy.
The critical response was mixed, though the box office results were impressive. Interestingly, director Rob Marshall, known for Memoirs of a Geisha and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, was not the first filmmaker to consider adapting Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairytale for the big screen. Sofia Coppola had previously been attached to her own remake of the story.
Back in 2014, the Lost in Translation and The Virgin Suicides filmmaker had been attached to a live-action production of The Little Mermaid produced by Universal Pictures and Working Title. However, just a year after confirming her involvement, Coppola left the project, leaving us all to wonder what might have been.
Coppola’s movies often have a strong feminist perspective and deal with the themes of loneliness, wealth, adolescence and isolation, which sounds like a version of The Little Mermaid would have been the perfect venture. For those not familiar with the fairy tale or Disney version, the story focuses on a teenage mermaid princess called Ariel who dreams of giving up her life in the sea to become a human being.
The Disney movie of 1989 saw Ariel fall in love with a human prince called Eric, which leads her to make a fateful deal with the malicious sea witch Ursula; pretty standard fare for a late 20th-century Disney offering. However, Coppola’s version wasn’t going to stick to the Disney effort and would have tapped into Anderson’s original story.
“It wasn’t the Disney version; it was actually the original fairy tale, which is much darker,” Coppola had once said at an event at New York City’s Film Society of Lincoln Center. “I thought it would be fun to do a fairy tale. I’ve always loved fairy tales, so I was curious about doing that.”
Coppola was evidently interested in taking on The Little Mermaid and putting her spin on the classic story. However, there seemed to be some stumbling blocks that arrived as a result of her involvement with a huge production studio like Universal. “We couldn’t agree on some elements,” Coppola had told Variety upon departing the project. “When it’s smaller, you can have exactly what you have in mind. For me, it wasn’t a good fit.”
During the Lincoln Center event, Coppola said that the production just “became too big of a scale”. Considering that she wanted to shoot the film “underwater”, the big scale meant that the project was not realistic. Coppola admitted that as “interesting” was to “think about” but it would have “been a nightmare”.
It’s a great shame that Coppola never got to make her version of The Little Mermaid, not only because the story seemed right up her street in terms of its themes but also because the director herself seemed to have the right amount of passion to get it made well. But sometimes, after all, some of the best movies never see the light of day, condemned to life, well, under the sea of production hell.
