Way back in 2010, we learned that Atonement filmmaker Joe Wright had signed up to helm a live-action take on The Little Mermaid.
However, rather than adapting Disney's animated movie, this version was set to borrow heavily from Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale. As a result, much of what people love about that 1989 classic was set to go out the window for a darker intepretation, though the filmmaker still hoped to deliver a story suitable for families.
Wright ultimately left the project and, after going through a few different filmmakers, it fell by the wayside until Disney decided to remake their version with actress and singer Halle Bailey.
During a recent interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Maleficent star Elle Fanning confirmed she was being lined up to play the title character in a movie that certainly sounds like it would have been pretty...unique!
"Joe Wright and I were supposed to do the Little Mermaid. It was with Working Title and it was going to be the 'She Turns Into Foam' version," the actress recalls. "Very dark. Very musical. Very theatrical like he does."
"I won that part. He made me sing in my audition. It wasn’t a song, like the lines. 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."
“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," Fanning concluded. "[The Little Mermaid] just fell apart so you’re like, 'Oh well, that’s done.'"
There's certainly room for other versions of The Little Mermaid, though something tells us Wright's take probably wouldn't be embraced the same way as the one heading to theaters later this month!
That's set to splash down on May 27.