'The Little Mermaid' Director And Alan Menken Talks About The Animated Prince Eric Very Much Needing Revising For The Live-action Version

Interview with Director Rob Marshall and Alan Menken of Disney Pixar's The Little Mermaid

Transcript

00:00Eric had nothing. It was such a simple sort of wooden character from the original and anybody,

00:05I mean, even Alan Menken would agree to that. I mean, they all would say, yeah, that wasn't

00:09developed. And so finding his journey, finding his story, creating his mother, the character of the

00:15queen, understanding that he doesn't feel like he fits in either. There's these similarities

00:20between the two worlds. His parent isn't understanding what he wants in the world,

00:27limiting him to not being able to do what he wants to do. He sees something, a vision past

00:35his small world, so does Ariel. And then we realized, of course, he needs a song. Like,

00:41what's his I want? What's his journey? So all these things really, that felt like that whole

00:48portion of the story was that we were able to bring to life in a much fuller way.

01:00I love, it starts in a really roiling,

01:04you know, intimate place and then it builds and builds and builds. So it's really the build of it.

01:09You know, all I ever wanted.

01:21By the end, you're at the world uncharted and he's just full tilt. And it really introduces

01:28you to a whole other color of Prince Eric. I mean, that's, he's so three-dimensional now.

01:35And in the original, he's a little bit of a, you know, he serves his function

01:43and it's lovely, but this is, you know, really three-dimensional.