βUnder The Sea is the most complicated production number weβve ever done. There is one live actor and everything else is digitally created. We thought, how do we do this? How do we begin? And I remember thinking about Fantasia (1940). I thought of Walt Disney and I remembered when he did Fantasia, the Nutcracker Suite sequence, he used the Ballet Russes as a template. He used their bodies to help him create the dancing flowers or the snowflakes or the mushrooms. I thought we should work with a dance company. So we brought the Alvin Ailey company over to London to work with them to create this musical number and we asked them to actually replicate these different sea creatures and how they moved. So that our CGI artists would have a body to work from and to mold from. It was insanity in a way. But I will say, at the end of the day, having that beautiful dance company there with us and being able to work with actual dancers was really the key. I think that was the key to getting into this [musical number] and figuring it out.β- Rob Marshall THELITTLEMERMAID(2023) Dir. Rob Marshall
Live Action Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid (2023) is the answer to the question: “would he still love me if I was a worm?” Because, yes that man would 110% would.
