At the Disney fan expo D23 on September 9,  Disney unveiled the first teaser trailer for the live-action remake of the 1989 animated film, featuring Halle Bailey’s mermaid Ariel singing Part of Your World. The remake is set to be released in theatres on May 26, 2023. Disney’s biennial D23 Expo is currently taking place at the Anaheim Convention Center.

The video shows Bailey singing underwater in full mermaid mode, to a standing ovation from the audience.

Director Rob Marshall, of Chicago fame, celebrated the fact that this was a live-action musical. Bringing up the Oscar-winning movie from the past, he said, “When we started this journey it was very important to honour the original” but also reimagine and “bring some depth” to the new film. The director also asked Little Mermaid’s longtime Disney alum Alan Menken to link up with the award-winning Lin-Manuel Miranda to come up with four new songs. “They’d never collaborated together before, and it’s magical…. We still retain the beauty of the original score by the late great Howard Ashman.”

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According to The Hollywood Reporter, Marshall expressed his love of the original film’s soundtrack, which also includes fan favourites like Under the Sea and Kiss the Girl, inspired his take on the project: “When it opened in 1989 … musicals were gone,” he said of the animated Little Mermaid. “Even though it was animated, we could hear people singing at movies again.”

Along with the teaser for The Little Mermaid, convention goers got a sneak peek at Mufasa: The Lion King, a prequel to the original Lion King story, and Disney’s live-action Snow White remake, starring Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot.

The news of Bailey’s casting as Ariel previously sparked outrage amongst some Disney fans, who objected to a Black actress playing the fictional princess. In an interview with Variety last month, the Grammy Award nominee addressed the controversy.

“I want the little girl in me and the little girls just like me who are watching to know that they’re special and that they should be a princess in every single way,” she said. “There’s no reason that they shouldn’t be. That reassurance was something that I needed.”