Little Mermaid

adaptation of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, that meant establishing rules about moving between land (more realistic) and sea (the fantasy realm), reintroducing the cherished songs once the story moves underwater and not a moment before. To wit, Marshall moved the original first song (“Fathoms Below”) to later in the film, turned it into a sea shanty, and has the liveaction movie open with Ariel (Halle Bailey) singing “Part of Your World.”

Marshall and Disney go way back; in 1999, he directed The Wonderful World of Disney’s televised Annie (with Kathy Bates); he also choreographed the Brandy and Whitney Houston version of Cinderella in 1997. Directing The Little Mermaid offered the unique challenge of the source material being an animated movie, requiring exhaustive previsualization, filming against a blue screen, separate rigs and stunt teams for every single actor, and digitalizing the bold world that exists “Under the Sea.”

“It was a chance to reimagine something so beloved,” Marshall says, adding that he also revisited Hans Christian Andersen’s story and discovered modern themes “about someone who feels that they don’t belong, that they belong somewhere else, that it’s not where everyone around them feels they should be, but where they feel they should be.”

Embodying that journey of finding her place is Bailey, who Marshall praises for bringing to the role a mix of wisdom and naïveté, strength and vulnerability, wonder and a strong sense of self. “As a director, you pray reprise of “Part of Your World.” Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) and seagull Scuttle (Awkwafina) get first-time solos, too: “Wild Uncharted Waters” and “The Scuttlebutt,” respectively.

If you can believe it, Ariel only had one (iconic) song in the animated film. So the songwriters gave voice to her transformation from mermaid to human with “For the First Time,” a musical montage that Marshall says encompasses all of her “firsts” on land: “the experience of how scary it is, how awkward it is, how wonderful it is.” someone will claim the role so you don’t have to even make a decision,” he says. “I saw her become a star in front of me, literally.”

The Oscar-winning music got a refresh, too. Returning composer Alan Menken collaborated with Lin-Manuel Miranda (with whom Marshall had worked on Mary Poppins Returns) to produce three-and-a-half new songs —the half being a more somber

The song occurs after Ariel has given up her voice to sea witch Ursula (Melissa McCarthy), so the singing is all internal. It’s an unexpected homage to musical theater classics like Barbra Streisand’s Yentl, which used the internal song to great effect. Marshall teases that there’s “a little surprise that happens toward the end of it, which is a really cool thing that happens.”

Marshall has been so immersed with The Little Mermaid for the past five years that he feels like (his pun) he’s only just coming up for air. Now, he must get his bearings for his next journey. “I’ve never done a movie like another movie,” he says. “God knows what [my next project] will be. I don’t know; go to the Moon or something!”