While his plans for Indian Summer with Cate Blachett fell through late last year due to funding issues, Atonement director Joe Wright quickly signed onto and shot the teen assassin drama Hanna, which is now in post-production. With that one almost in the bag, he’s now looking towards what to make next, and it looks like he’s found it, as Variety reports he’s signed on to direct a live action version of The Little Mermaid.
This isn’t a live action version of the Disney version, but a new film that Working Title is developing based on a script by Brick Lane screenwriter Abi Morgan. There’s no news on whether there’s a particular angle they’re taking with Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale, but the film was apparently inspired by a production by the The Little Angel Theatre Company, which was part of their cycle of children’s tales told using puppets. Whatever Morgan and Wright are bringing to the story, it’ll be the first live-action English-language version of the story about a young mermaid who gives up life in the sea to gain the love of a prince.
It’ll be interesting to see whether they keep some of the aspects of Andersen’s original story that are normally removed to make it more palatable to modern family tastes. For exmaple, in the original tale, after The Little Mermaid gets legs, she feels like she’s walking on swords and her feet are continually bleeding. Then to help her win the love of the prince she must dance, despite the fact she’s in excruciating agony. The ending is rather more tragic as well, with the prince marrying someone else, and the mermaid almost killing him because of her depair over what she gae up to be with him, before she throws herself into the sea and dies.
Let’s see if Joe Wright is brave enough to bring that to the screen.