'The Little Mermaid' Teaser Features First Look at Melissa McCarthy's Ursula

The Little Mermaid will take audiences under the sea again in May. Disney released a new, 30-second teaser for the film on Wednesday. It is a live-action remake of the beloved 1989 animated movie, which in turn was inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen story. Halle Bailey, one-half of the Grammy-nominated duo Chloe x Halle, plays Ariel, while Melissa McCarthy stars as the villainous Ursula.

The new teaser begins with Bailey singing "Part of Your World" as brief footage from the movie plays. At the very end, McCarthy's take on the famous Ursula cackling is heard. We can see a very dark shot of Ursula's eyes peeking over her tentacles.

This was the first new look at the movie since Disney released a teaser trailer in September 2022. The new trailer gives a better look at how director Rob Marshall is bringing this story to the screen again. Just as in the 1989 film, Ariel is a mermaid who dreams of the human world and falls in love with a prince. She makes a deal with the sea witch Ursula to spend time on land, but without her voice.

Jonah Hauer-King plays Prince Eric. Javier Bardem plays Ariel's father, King Triton. The voice cast includes Daveed Diggs as Sebastian the crab, Jacob Tremblay as Flunder, and Awkwafina as Scuttle. Marshall directed from a screenplay by David Magee and Jane Goldman, and a story by Marshall, Magee, and John DeLuca.

Marshall previously worked with Disney on Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Into the Woods, and Marry Poppins Returns. He has an Oscar nomination for directing the 2002 Best Picture winner Chicago. In an interview with The Wrap, Marshall called The Little Mermaid the "most challenging film" of his career.

"I don't think anybody's ever done an underwater musical before," Marshall said. "I have to say every single moment of the film had to be choreographed in advance so that we could have a flow to the whole piece. It's crazy the apparatuses we worked with from wires to things called tuning forks to teeter-totters. Thank God we had the rehearsal time. You always need it on a musical anyway."

Marshall also admitted to Collider that there was still some post-production work to do on the movie, even though it is scheduled to open on May 26. He said the picture would not be locked until the end of March. That will conclude over four and a half years of working on The Little Mermaid.

The 1989 Little Mermaid is available to stream on Disney+. The movie is credited with helping to kick off the Disney Renaissance of the early 1990s. Composer Alan Menken, who worked on Marshall's film, won the Oscar for Best Original Score. "Under the Sea" earned Menken and the late lyricist Howard Ashman the Best Original Song Oscar.