We already know that Halle Bailey is playing Ariel in Disney's live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. However, there was a time when Elle Fanning was going to play the iconic mermaid in a darker undeveloped reboot.
Elle Fanning was recently a guest on the Happy Sad Confused podcast where she confirmed she was cast as the lead in a planned remake of The Little Mermaid that would've been directed by Joe Wright (Atonement).
"Joe Wright and I were supposed to do the Little Mermaid," Fanning said.
"It was with Working Title and it was going to be the 'She Turns Into Foam' version. Very dark. Very musical. Very theatrical like he does," Fanning added. She then shared details of her audition for Wright.
"I won that part. He made me sing in my audition. It wasn’t a song, like the lines," Fanning said.
"So I went in and read the lines and did the scene but then he said, ‘Now I want you to sing all the lines.’ And I was like, ‘Okay.’ And so I did and then he gave it to me in the room."
"But that was very exciting because it was like, we’re going to do it, and then it just didn’t work out," she continued.
But what happened to the non-Disney remake of The Little Mermaid? Fanning pointed out that it all went down because of the budget.
“I think the budget was going to be astronomical because it was the first time they were going to film underwater. He had this whole plan of how it was going to be,” she stated.
The darker remake would have been very different from the animated Disney film. However, it didn't push through and the House of Mouse went ahead with their live-action remake with Halle Bailey.
Disney's The Little Mermaid will hit theaters on May 26, 2023.
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