{"id":8876,"date":"2019-07-01T09:58:37","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T16:58:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog-proxy.atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/?p=8876"},"modified":"2019-07-01T09:58:37","modified_gmt":"2019-07-01T16:58:37","slug":"disneys-little-mermaid-wants-melissa-mccarthy-to-play-ursula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/the-little-mermaid-disney-remake-melissa-mccarthy-ursula","title":{"rendered":"Disney&#8217;s &#8216;Little Mermaid&#8217; Wants Melissa McCarthy To Play Ursula"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The Little Mermaid<\/em> is the next animated classic to get the live-action remake treatment, and Disney wants Melissa McCarthy to star.<\/p>\n<p>Variety reports that the Oscar-nominated actor is in early talks to play the iconic sea witch, Ursula, in a movie to be directed by Rob Marshall (<em>Mary Poppins Returns<\/em>). Ariel, Prince Eric, Sebastian, Flounder, and Scuttle have yet to be cast, but reports suggest Disney is aiming to populate those roles with a diverse cast.<\/p>\n<p>The remake&#8217;s producers are aiming for \u201ccontemporary and compelling casting choices, while still paying homage to the beloved animated original,\u201d the report<em>\u00a0<\/em>said. Former\u00a0Variety reporter and entertainment journalist Kris Tapley tweeted some interesting names on the casting wish-list:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">With the McCarthy news in, I\u2019ve also heard Jacob Tremblay for Flounder and Awkwafina for Scuttle. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/TheLittleMermaid?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#TheLittleMermaid<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Kris Tapley (@kristapley) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kristapley\/status\/1144764003337551873?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 29, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Lin-Manuel Miranda is also on hand. He will team up with the 1989 film&#8217;s original songwriter, Alan Menken<strong>, <\/strong>to write new tunes for the film. (Don&#8217;t worry, fans: The original classics will also be there, too.)<\/p>\n<p>The animated\u00a0<em>Little Mermaid<\/em>\u00a0is an all-time classic; it&#8217;s about as beloved and &#8220;sacred cow&#8221; as a movie can get. Disney&#8217;s remake experiment has been hit (<em>Jungle Book, Aladdin<\/em>) and miss (<em>Dumbo<\/em>) and given the rabid fanbase for the 1989 original, here&#8217;s hoping Disney does something just as good (if not better) instead of just different.<\/p>\n<p>Casting the\u00a0<em>Can You Ever Forgive Me?<\/em> star in one of her first family films is a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Little Mermaid is the next animated classic to get the live-action remake treatment, and Disney wants Melissa McCarthy to star. Variety reports that the Oscar-nominated actor is in early talks to play the iconic sea witch, Ursula, in a movie to be directed by Rob Marshall (Mary Poppins Returns). Ariel, Prince Eric, Sebastian, Flounder, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":8878,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[37,46],"class_list":["post-8876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-news","tag-newspage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8876"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8916,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8876\/revisions\/8916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}