Director: Rob Marshall
Rob Marshall's 2024 live-action version of The Little Mermaid takes a story most families already know by heart and rebuilds it around a new lead performance and a fuller sense of the world beneath the waves.
What is The Little Mermaid about?
Halle Bailey plays a young mermaid pulled toward the human world above the surface, curious enough about it to strike a bargain with a sea witch: her voice, traded for a pair of legs and a shot at the life she's been watching from a distance. What she doesn't fully grasp when she agrees is how steep that trade will turn out to be once she's on land, unable to speak for herself, trying to make an impression on a prince she barely knows while the clock on the deal keeps running.
Cast & crew
Halle Bailey anchors the film opposite Jonah Hauer-King, with Daveed Diggs, Awkwafina, Jacob Tremblay, Noma Dumezweni, Javier Bardem, and Melissa McCarthy filling out the cast of mentors, family, and the witch driving the central bargain. The mix of live performance and animated sea creatures asks the cast to react to characters that were added digitally later, a balancing act the film leans on throughout.
Context & significance
This telling sits inside Disney's broader run of live-action remakes built from its animated catalogue, adapting a story that traces back further still to Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tale. The 2024 production, directed by Rob Marshall, keeps the musical spine of its predecessor while expanding scenes above and below water with practical sets and effects work, aiming to give an old story enough scale that it plays differently on a big screen than it did in its earlier animated form.
Where & how to watch
The Little Mermaid is available on K-Time with a free account login, dubbed in Farsi for family viewing. The platform's full interface is in Farsi, designed for Persian-speaking households watching together wherever they are.