Former Disney president Jeffrey Katzenberg might be eating humble pie, after his comments about the iconic The Little Mermaid have resurfaced in an interview with the original film’s director. 

John Musker, who helmed the classic 1989 animation alongside Ron Clements, looked back on The Little Mermaid’s success in an interview with Spanish newspaper El País. Now retired from Disney, Musker spoke freely about his time at the production company, including a recount of Katzenberg’s hesitation around The Little Mermaid in the months before its release. 

According to Musker — who has elsewhere directed fellow Disney staples Moana, Aladdin and Hercules — Katzenberg told the team involved in The Little Mermaid that “movies about girls don’t work.” At the time, Disney had yet to release a true box office and critical smash, and Katzenberg didn’t have the foresight around what type of story would appeal to mass audiences. 

Musker also revealed in the interview that Katzenberg issued a strange directive while The Little Mermaid was being made, in response to the mammoth success of an action movie at the time. “Die Hard had been a box-office hit,” Musker recalled. “So Katzenberg came into the office saying, ‘We need The Little Mermaid to be more Die Hard.” 

It’s a curious suggestion for an animated film targeted at young children, but Musker said the production note resulted in The Little Mermaid receiving a “second action sequence, with an Ursula who is as big as the building in Nakatomi Plaza.” While Musker described the former Disney head as “an emperor”, he said he still preferred Katzenberg’s leadership to that which followed, since the later inclusion of Pixar and John Lasseter meant there were “too many people to satisfy.” 

Katzenberg’s comments haven’t aged well, especially considering that The Little Mermaid was successful enough to spawn a lucrative (albeit controversial) live-action remake in 2023. In the years since the animation, Disney’s catalogue now brims with the very “movies about girls” that Katzenberg thought would fail, from Beauty and the Beast to Tangled, Frozen, and Mulan.

Elsewhere in the interview, Musker shared his opinions on Disney’s increasing investment in live-action remakes, including 2023’s The Little Mermaid. The Lion King, Mulan and Pinocchio are just some of the animated originals that have been subject to live-action versions in recent years, and Musker said Disney’s risk-adverse mindset is such that they want to “just do [a successful movie] again and sell it to them in a different form.” 

Musker also criticized The Little Mermaid remake for not “playing up the father-daughter story that was the heart of the movie,” adding that “live animals in a zoo have more expression” than the remake’s version of Sebastian. As for the live-action version of Moana, Musker said he has no involvement in the Dwayne Johnson-starring remake, but “hope[s] that they do it well.” 

After overseeing Disney during what many believe was its golden years, Katzenberg left the company to co-found animation rival Dreamworks, finding more success with franchises like Shrek, Kung-Fu Panda, and How to Train Your Dragon.

It’s no question that Brandy is R&B royalty. And now’s as good a time as any to bless the world with a biopic. But it’s never an easy job casting for the role of a musical legend. However, Halle Bailey just might be the perfect star to bring a Brandy biopic to life. Heck, even Brandy herself thinks so.

Sure, there’s the Whitney Houston biopic route, where an actress lip-syncs to original tracks, but there’s a lot more authenticity when a singer steps into these shoes. Which is why Halle Bailey’s name has been making the rounds. But where are the casting rumors coming from, anyway? 

Halle Bailey as Brandy: A Hollywood match!

Halle Bailey on the big screen as Brandy Norwood would be a dream come true. But it’s not just fans doing the dreaming. In fact, the buzz started with Brandy herself. On Aug. 27th, Brandy appeared on an A24 studio interview titled “Close Up with Brandy,” and it was there she spilled the beans about wanting Halle Bailey to play her in a biopic. Clips began circulating around social media, and the rest, as they say, is viral tweets. 

The suggestion is not exactly shocking. Both Brandy and Halle have startlingly similar career trajectories, despite coming from different generations. They also seem to have very similar, warm and welcoming personalities. And to top it off, they’re equally powerful vocalists! And if the Disney live-action remake of The Little Mermaid tells us anything, it’s how much Halle is up to the task with her acting!

Before this, many tweets have gone down in viral history wishing Halle Bailey would star in a Janet Jackson biopic. But if that doesn’t come through, this is more than enough. And who says the 24-year-old singer-songwriter-actress can’t do both?

Why does the world need a Brandy biopic?

Brandy’s career first took off in the 1990s with hit singles like “I Wanna Be Down” and “Baby.” Brandy would go on to become an R&B pioneer before her 18th birthday, and her influence still continues to reverberate in the works of industry hotshots like Arianna Grande, Sam Smith, and Rihanna.

But Brandy wasn’t just successful in the music industry, as she was equally a trailblazing actress. Brandy practically raised an entire generation on her sitcom Moesha, which aired on UPN from 1996 till 2001. Brandy would also star in the 1997 Cinderella movie co-produced by none other than the legendary fairy godmother, Whitney Houston. She was “the Black Cinderella,” so very similar to  Halle Bailey’s “Black Ariel.” In fact, Bailey confessed to being inspired by her for the role!

So, even if the Brandy biopic still exists mostly in speculation land for now, the mere possibility of it is enough to get a lot of people going! These two hard working women have scores of fans across all ages who would nearly break necks in anticipation of a collab, and for good reason. And one thing’s for sure – a Brady biopic, with or without Halle Bailey, would be a deserved tribute to an often- overlooked artist who helped shape R&B for her generation, for the young artists of today, and for generations to come. 

Lin-Manuel Miranda is one of musical theater and film’s most prolific artists and he’s about to add the new Lion King movie to his list of hits.

We guarantee you’ve had at least one of the 44-year-old’s songs stuck in your head in the past. From some of Broadway’s most exciting musicals in the last few decades to Disney’s biggest recent hits, Miranda has built quite the legacy.

He first made a name for himself in 2008 when he created the musical In the Heights on Broadway. It won four Tonys, including Best Musical and Best Original Song. Then in 2015, Miranda took Hamilton, his most famous production to date, to Broadway, effectively blowing up his career. By then he had also caught the eye of the Mouse House and had begun working on one of its most beloved films in recent memory.

Which Disney movies feature music by Lin-Manuel Miranda?

Mufasa: The Lion King is only one of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s several collaborations with Disney. The prequel/sequel to 2019’s The Lion King will include music written by the famed songwriter, who will have big shoes to fill as he follows the footsteps of the likes of Elton John, Hans Zimmer, Pharrell Williams, and Beyoncé.

“We wanted to really find a balance of symbiosis between the music and the film,” director Barry Jenkins told Empire. “Lin really leaned in and tried to find the places that [we] had tried to go deeper into the background of some of these characters.”

Miranda’s work on Mufasa follows his contributions to the new original songs on 2023’s The Little Mermaid, namely “The Scuttlebutt,” “For the First Time,” and “Wild Uncharted Waters,” for which he wrote the lyrics.

Before that, the New York native was in charge of writing the soundtrack for 2021’s Encanto — his first major Disney job since 2016’s Moana. In between the two, Miranda also starred in the Walt Disney film Mary Poppins Returns, released a Hamilton film co-produced by Disney, and contributed to the soundtracks of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

The Disney/Lin-Manuel Miranda catalog continues to grow, with some questionable chapters (we’re looking at you, “The Scuttlebutt”), but mostly extraordinary successes like “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” and “How Far I’ll Go.”

Whether the soundtrack of Mufasa: The Lion King will find company among one category or the other is for the public to decide when the film arrives in theaters Dec. 20, 2024.

Walt Disney Studios came skidding across the finish line of 2023, billowing solid black smoke clouds and dragging its fender, two tires, and a confused member of its pit crew behind it. 

Maybe that’s dramatic. But so was the news that Disney, the company that owns everything you’ve ever loved, was the first loser at the 2023 box office. The winner, against all odds, was Universal, the company that brought you Cocaine Bear and tried kind of hard to bring you the Dark Universe. With the help of releases like Oppenheimer, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and M3GAN, the studio raked in a solid $4.9 billion and change. Meanwhile, the folks at Disney ate found crow meat and drank gutter sludge thanks to their $4.827 billion take. Rookie numbers, really.

For their part, the folks at Disney were quick to point out the extenuating circumstances surrounding the egg on their faces: The studio only released 17 movies compared to Universal’s 24, and that more of their films had cracked the year’s top 10 than any other studio’s. Even so, the shame lingered. The House of Mouse’s top performer of the year was Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, written and directed by a man that they’d loudly fired in his last hurrah before taking over as head of the competition over at DC. Movies that should’ve been surefire hits – MCU entries, an Indiana Jones sequel, an adaptation of a beloved theme park attraction – ate it hard.

And sure, the majority of the crisis prevention over at Disney is probably keyed in on the MCU, what with The Marvels not even breaking $100 million domestic and Jonathan Majors’ personal crusade against making money. But there’s another point of diminishing returns that the studio might need to take into consideration: The gangrenous limb of the company responsible for live-action remakes.

Can Disney shake the live-action remake monkey off its back?

Looking at the situation with the jittery, glazed-over eyes of a compulsive gambler, it’s not hard to understand why Disney keeps rolling bones on live-action adaptations of its ubiquitous animated properties. Sure, when things go badly – and they do – it’s a disaster. There’s a dank studio basement somewhere in Burbank, and whichever junior executive said “Let’s remake Dumbo” is chained to the floor five years after the fact, writing “I’ve been bad” on the wall until Bob Iger says he can stop. 

But when the dice hit just right, they hit so hard. The last theatrically released Disney remake that didn’t come out mid-pandemic was The Lion King. It made the kind of money that ends wars. If the shady corners of the internet are right and you can buy a real lion for about $1500, then 2019’s The Lion King made enough money to buy every one of the remaining 24,000 lions in the world 40 times, and it did it while being just so boring, cultivating a 52% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It was the third live-action (ish) Disney remake to crack a billion dollars at the box office – fourth, if you count that Alice in Wonderland movie from 2010 as a remake and not just a nightmare that Tim Burton had after he fell asleep reading a Divergent book with cartoons on in the background.

2023 saw three major live-action Disney remakes: A dour Peter Pan remix that you forgot came out, which The Guardian called “able but unnecessary,” a Pinocchio… thing starring Tom Hanks as a wig on a greenscreen, and the only entry to make it to theaters: The Little Mermaid. The film fell short of expectations, raking in $570 million on a nearly $300 million budget. A target audience of Disney adults had grown wary of dead-eyed photorealistic CGI animals lip syncing to childhood classics. Culture war enthusiasts on either side of played-out arguments made the movie an exhausting proposition for curious potential theatergoers that just wanted to see Javier Bardem with a fish for a butt. All signs point to the studio’s next adaptation, Snow White, being more of the same. 

Even more than their alarmingly hit-and-miss financial performances, what might give Disney’s live-action division pause is the list of films they have left to adapt. The big entries from the studio’s golden age are already ed for. Hercules, Lilo and Stitch, and, inexplicably, The Aristocats are all slated for the next decade or so. A Robin Hood remake featuring photorealistic anthropomorphic animals might draw exactly the audience you’re imagining, but it’s hard to imagine what the crowd would look like at the premiere of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starring a true-to-life CGI congenital kyphosis patient. 

Should Disney stop making live-action adaptations? Probably, yeah, from a creative perspective, and for the sake of maintaining their last fistful of audience goodwill. Will they stop? Well, no. Of course they won’t. Public recognition is three quarters of the battle in marketing, and everyone knows a Disney movie when they see its title on a poster. As long as we keep handing them even a little bit of money, they’ll keep betting that we’ll do it again. Gambling doesn’t get easier to quit once it grosses you an estimated $10 billion over 30 years.

The year that has just wrapped up didn’t exactly go as planned for Disney, as has been made abundantly clear by the interruption of a 7-year streak of box office domination.

2023 marks the first time since 2015 that Disney did not come out on top of global ticket sales, losing out to Universal’s massively successful run. Oppenheimer, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and Fast X‘s bombastic performances took the production giant over the edge, suring Disney by a stingy margin of $80 million, according to Variety.

While that might not be much of a difference, the fact that this was the first time in seven years that Disney did not lead the year’s box-office numbers should be ringing the alarm at the Mouse House that things have to change. Notably, Disney’s past year was marred by consecutive disappointments — from The Marvels and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny to The Little Mermaid and Wish.

Marvel fatigue and the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s inner turmoil

Among Disney’s many slip-ups in 2023, Marvel was the most evident. The franchise that used to smash all records had one of its worst years ever — and not just at the box office, but on the small screen and in the media as well. The Marvels and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania both had disastrous runs, with the former becoming the juggernaut’s least successful film ever.

Scathing reports of behind-the-scenes turbulence exposed Marvel Studios’ wobbly future, which has been promptly managed by reducing the yearly output of films and shows, allowing for some fine-tuning in production and planning, as well as serving as an attempt to counter market saturation. A step in the right direction, but not nearly enough if storytelling quality isn’t restored along with a more reasonable release schedule — a big-enough set of dilemmas, and that’s without mentioning Marvel’s big Jonathan Majors problem.

Reboots and remakes are no longer special

Bringing back a fan-favorite property used to be a major event that people lined up to see, but when there are about 10 new reboots, remakes, or sequels announced every month, they end up losing their meaning. What’s more, these types of productions tend to lean on the popularity of their IP a little too much, failing to realize that no matter how beloved, unless a new installment lives up to what made the original special, it’s not going to go down well with the fanbase.

The Little Mermaid was a nice film that came out at the wrong time. Disney insists on producing live-action remakes of its cherished catalogue of princesses and other animated favorites, but while The Lion King, no matter how poor, was a novelty in its time, these big-budget CGI-filled live-actions are a dime a dozen these days.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny had Steven Spielberg to compete with, so the chances of it succeeding in capturing the magic of the franchise it was trying to bring back from the dead were slim to begin with. Of course, it became one of Disney’s most stunning flops in recent memory.

Disney forgot about being the biggest animation studio in the world

Amid all this, you ask, “I thought Disney made animated movies">is to make great movies. To tell stories that resonate, and where the ion and dedication of those involved backstage are evident in the material; where characters and plots are well thought-out and allowed to simmer, instead of being pushed out in response to tight deadlines — a prime example of which being the only Marvel success of the year, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

None of these concepts are revelations. Cinema used to be great, regardless of budget or scale, and so did Disney. It’s just a matter of believing in the potential of the medium again, and prioritizing creative voices over those whose only concern is the bottom line. If anything, Disney should regroup and go back to the essentials for the future of its flagships like Marvel and Star Wars, and while they’re at it, prioritize animation again.

When it comes to adapting animated adventures, which studio does it better than Disney? Although come to think of it, there aren’t many others out there doing that in the first place. Disney might be the only one who can.

From The Lion King to The Little Mermaid, the House of Mouse knows a thing or two about bringing some of its most beloved films into… a whole new world. (Sorry, it was right in front of me.) So, when I caught a TikTok supposing that FernGully: The Last Rainforest was being transformed into a live-action movie, I didn’t think twice. After a little digging, though, I should have.

Where did the FernGully remake rumors come from?

Well, this is fake. Actually, it’s faker than fake, it’s TikTok fake — which is so much worse. Sorry, folks. FernGully is not coming to theaters any time soon and certainly isn’t going to be around Christmas of 2024 no matter how hard you wish for it.

The TikTok has a showing a fan-made poster and walking through the “confirmed” casting. According to him, Hugh Jackman and Jim Carrey were cast in this remake. He talked about the details as fact, although they are anything but.

Why isn’t a live-action FernGully being made?

I’ll break it down for all you film buffs. Even if it wanted to, which it might, Disney couldn’t make a live-action FernGully. The company doesn’t own the rights. Shout! Studios does. Originally distributed by Fox, FernGully was never a Disney flick to begin with. Now it’s true that these days, Disney owns Fox outright, but that doesn’t change the fact that it doesn’t own FernGully.

Rumors, dear people, rumors. That’s all this is. Now, I’ll it that the artistry behind the fake poster is pretty good — it fooled me for a second, but sadly, none of this is real. For those of you out there who don’t care, or don’t know what FernGully: The Last Rainforest is in the first place — a quick history lesson.

What is FernGully about, and why is it still talked about?

FernGully: The Last Rainforest is a 1992 animated classic that goes a little something like this: When a logging company begins to cut down a magical Australian forest named FernGully, a fairy named Crysta accidentally shrinks down a human boy named Zak. Zak starts to see all the damage that the logging company causes and helps Crysta stop the environmental horrors and pollution.

Ever seen James Cameron’s Avatar? Dances with Wolves? It’s like that. As classic a tale as there ever has been, the old switching sides story is one of Hollywood’s most used tropes — and for good reason. We love it. Watching a character come around to the ways of another “tribe,” only to fight for the group he was against at the start is as heartwarming as it is inspiring.

Still, none of that matters. FernGully: The Last Rainforest isn’t being made into a live-action movie. Now that you know that fact, go forth and conquer, my friends.

In some respects, 2023 was a great year for cinema. For once superheroes didn’t dominate the highest-grossing list. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie quite snatches the crown of the highest-grossing movie, with its release date rival Oppenheimer performing way above expectations to score fifth place.

We’ve also been treated to Martin Scorsese’s excellent Killers of the Flower Moon, Taylor Swift’s incredible The Eras Tour concert movie, and the still very underrated Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (it’s really great!).

But, sadly, the year was also littered with releases that absolutely failed to live up to the hype. So, without further ado, grab your sad trombone, and let’s get to it.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (February)

Nobody could have predicted Disney’s 2023 would have been this disastrous, but Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania clued us in that not all was well at Marvel Studios. This third Ant-Man entry ditches much of the charm of the previous two movies for a confusing and aesthetically ugly story that wasted the cast’s talents. The objectively awful (and unfinished) VFX was just the cherry on top.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods (March)

Warner Bros. Discovery essentially sent Shazam! Fury of the Gods out to die. After having suffered multiple delays it was shuffled out in mid-March, arriving pre-mortally wounded by the announcement that the DCEU was dead, that James Gunn was rebooting everything, and that none of this mattered. That would be something of a tragedy if Fury of the Gods was secretly great. It wasn’t.

Paint (April)

You have to try really, really hard to dampen Owen Wilson’s natural charisma and innate sense of comedy, but the ill-conceived Bob Ross parody Paint somehow manages it. The original script was considered so good it was included on the famous Hollywood ‘Black List’ of unproduced screenplays, but somewhere along the line something went wrong and Paint ended up as a boring and unfunny 96 minutes. The kiss of death? This was a comedy and I didn’t laugh out loud once.

The Pope’s Exorcist (April)

It is not difficult to sell me a movie ticket. I see a poster of Russell Crowe dressed up as a priest, sporting a majestic beard and striding manfully towards the camera. The Pope’s Exorcist? Hell yeah. Soon after my butt was on a seat at the theater. But The Pope’s Exorcist did not live up to my expectations, and, truth be told, Crowe’s commanding beard was the best thing about it. This wasn’t the worst exorcist-based movie of the year (see below), but it’s far from what it could have been.

Renfield (April)

How on Earth do you screw up Nicolas Cage playing Count Dracula? Renfield had great trailers, an excellent cast and a lot of pre-release buzz. All that eventually amounted to… not much, as it ended up feeling more like a comedy sketch than a feature film. Once the novelty of Cage’s Dracula has worn off there’s just not much to this lame comedy, and we’ll be forever annoyed that Renfield squandered its premise.

The Little Mermaid (May)

The shine has been coming off Disney’s live-action adaptations for some time now, but the much-anticipated The Little Mermaid should have been a home run. After all, an undersea world is ripe for glittering CGI, the songs still slap, and it’s got some talent in front of the lens. So The Little Mermaid ending up so underwhelming and dull was a massive let-down. Its shortcomings were made all the more apparent by the similarly subaquatic Avatar: The Way of Water arriving a few months earlier and delivering an underwater world leagues beyond Triton’s kingdom.

The Flash (June)

If you’re going to market yourself as “the greatest superhero movie ever” you better deliver the goods. And… well, The Flash was The Flash, which would have been an awful movie even if Ezra Miller hadn’t spent the last few years on a whirlwind crime spree apparently intent on destroying their career.

But Miller did do that, and it left an indelibly bad odor on an already stinky movie. A series of PS2-lookin’ CGI cameos from dead actors reeked not only of bad taste but of studio execs flailing around in panic as they tried to salvage something from this disaster.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (June)

Let’s be clear: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is not a bad movie. It has its moments, it’s nice to see Harrison Ford in a fedora again, it showcased some very well-done de-ageing VFX, and is a damn sight better than The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. But was it disappointing? Absolutely. The second half of the movie steadily gets worse and eventually devolves into fan service, and it largely wastes Mads Mikkelsen. Ultimately, perhaps a summer blockbuster starring an actor pushing 80 wasn’t a great idea.

The Exorcist: Believer (October)

I went into The Exorcist: Believer with low expectations. Sequels to the 1973 classic have always been hit and miss and director David Gordon Green’s dreadful Halloween Ends had me prepared for the worst. To be fair, Believer isn’t the worst movie in the franchise, but it’s far from the worthy successor we’d been pitched. By the end, it’s collapsed into a pile of generic special effects that felt like a parody. Oh well, here’s hoping 2025’s The Exorcist: Deceiver is an improvement.

Wish (November)

Wish was billed as a return to the golden age of Disney, consciously echoing the hand-drawn 2D animation with which the studio made its name. In that at least it succeeds. In everything else? Well, if 2023 can be noted for anything it’s wallowing in nostalgia. Sometimes it pays off (hi, Barbie), but sometimes it doesn’t. Wish is packed with overt references to older, better Disney movies and just left me wishing I was watching them rather than this.

However, it’s important to note that we’re only just heading into December, so perhaps there’s room for one more cinematic disaster to make this list. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, I’m looking in your direction…

With the pumpkins a-glowing and everyone ready to don their costumes; it’s the most spooktastic time of the year! That’s right, Halloween is right around the corner, but we all know that it’s more of a spooky season that we exist in, and when lovers of all things frightful and those more on the delightful side think ahead to costumes for the memorable holiday, Disney looks are a must!

With the Walt Disney Company celebrating 100 years this year, there will be no shortage of costumes that honor the best and most beloved in the Disney and Pixar realm, and luckily for you, there’s still enough time to put together a look that will be as captivating as it is magical. Think Beauty and the Beast, Up, or Monsters Inc. — no matter what your favorite Disney film is, there’s a character that you can channel on Halloween this year.

Of course, some of the most fun costumes to have are couples costumes, and that’s in both a romantic and friendship way of speaking. Dres with those you love is one of the most exciting ways to conjure up some magic on the day when the spooky and the not-so-haunted come together in a glorious show of all things scary and otherworldly beautiful. From the best couples in the Disney realm to the characters who show children and adults alike what the true meaning of friendship is, here’s to another holiday made brighter by Disney magic.

Can’t decide which Disney character to channel this Halloween? We’ve compiled a list of couple costumes for Disney fans and added a few that you can don with your besties instead because platonic love is just as important as romantic love.

Carl and Ellie

It goes without saying that Carl and Ellie were the couple we all hope to be a part of, falling in love when they were young and making plans for a grand adventure together. Ellie got sick, and their plans together changed, but she left Carl the most incredible gift when he looked upon a scrapbook she’d made of their life together, realizing they’d been on a grand experiment the entire time.

You could play a younger or older pair with your costumes, and either way, it would be a hit! Also, be prepared to hand out tissues to people you encounter; some of us get really emotional about Up. It’s me, hi… I’m the emotional one; it’s me.

Mike Wazowski and Celia Mae

Mike and Celia aren’t exactly Disney royalty, but their the kind of couple as iconic as the costumes would be! They’re fun, hilarious, not too “perfect” to be annoyed with one another from time to time, and one of the most relatable Disney/Pixar couples of all, which is ironic as they’re monsters!

Dres as Mike and Celia would be a sure way to be the talk of the party, bonus points if you bring something that occasionally covers Mike’s face!

Jack and Sally

Would it even be Halloween if we didn’t mention this film? Dres as Jack and Sally is as romantic a notion as it is spooky, and we can’t think of a better couple to take on if you’re celebrating spooky season. Their story is rooted in all things horror meets Christmas, and during this time of the year, those holidays are all we’re thinking about anyway!

If you have a dog, you could dress them up as Zero; it would be the cutest.

Tiana and Naveen

These costumes would be rather iconic to don on Halloween night as either their royal versions or Tiana and Naveen as frogs. Tiana is one of the most beautiful and down-to-Earth Disney princesses we’ve adored, and Naveen is a gentleman, even as a frog. The Princess and the Frog doesn’t get near enough credit, so why not celebrate it during the most fun season of all?

How perfect would it be to dress up as them as royals and keep little fake frogs on your shoulders?

Kida and Milo

It’s time to set sail to Atlantis for this one; we know in many places, Halloween is quite chilly, but there are always versions of Kida’s attire that you could pull off even if you’re celebrating somewhere where winter coats are necessary. Milo and Kida have a friendship-turned-romance, and it’s truly something special. They’re not a couple you think of immediately when you think of Disney pairs, either, so you’d certainly be a trendsetter this year.

Troy and Gabriella

Stepping away from the animated and into the realm of iconic Disney Channel movies, what better way to channel your inner teen romance than dressing as Troy and Gabriella from High School Musical? Their love story might not have panned out how they hoped in their youth, but they’re still a pretty important piece of Disney history for fans.

Plus, you could return to some pretty neat (and somewhat questionable) style choices as you enjoy the Halloween celebration!

Giselle and Robert

Did we initially just add this to our list to get to share a video of McDreamy… er… Patrick Dempsey? We can neither confirm nor deny that, but how out-of-the-box and still very Disney would it be to show up as one of the cutest couples in the Disney realm? Giselle is magical and a little out of the ordinary, and she shows up in Robert’s life at just the right time.

They have some great style choices that you could choose from, too, something fancy or something a little dressed down; either way, you’d have a ball – quite literally!

Rapunzel and Flynn

Rapunzel and Flynn, need we say more? They’re quite the pair, and while their love story starts off kind of rocky, they eventually get it right. Flynn makes Rapunzel believe in herself while she gives him a taste of what a life with a little more joy and magic could look like; plus, how cute would their costumes be?

Alisha and Kiko Hawthorne

While their time on screen together was short, Alisha and Kiko had quite a love story; they found one another in an out-of-this-world way, and they formed a family, giving Kiko a lifetime of memories to look back on fondly. As characters who worked in space, dres as this pair would be pretty iconic. The jacket, the official look of it all, and the color scheme – talk about stunning!

Mickey and Minnie Mouse

Minnie and Mickey, you can’t go wrong dres as one of the most fundamental pairings in Disney history! Their story needs no introduction or summary; they’re just the pair you love to love!

Not in a couple? Don’t fret; we’ve also got a few ideas for you and your besties this Halloween because, let’s face it, sometimes the most profound relationships you’ll ever have are with your friends and family.

Elsa and Anna

Anna and Elsa grew up together, and while their lives stopped “crossing paths” for a while, they never truly gave up on one another and never will!

Remy and Alfredo Linguini

Remy and Alfredo! How cute would it be to dress up as this pair? They’re besties; they believe in one another, and while their friendship got off to a rocky start, they truly bring out the best in one another.

The Sanderson Sisters

Would it even be Halloween if we didn’t include the Sanderson Sisters?

Joy and Sadness

Joy and Sadness are among our favorite friendships in Disney/Pixar history, and these costumes would be adorable.

Mickey and Pluto

Just like Mickey and Minnie, Mickey and Pluto are quite the pair!

Lilo and Stitch

Lilo and Stitch are best friends-turned-family, and you can consider yourself lucky if you’ve found a friend like that!

Ahsoka is not a TV show that attempts to hide its influences in any way. From the opening minutes of its premiere, it was obvious this was a show made by the makers of The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels and made for fans of those two animated series. At the same time, it’s also soaked in callbacks to the wider Star Wars franchise. And yet this franchise, for which George Lucas was heavily inspired by samurai movies and culture, had never existed in a vacuum. And it seems creator Dave Filoni looked pretty close to home for inspiration.

Believe it or not, there’s actually a ton of Disney influence on display across Ahsoka season 1, with various story beats, character moments, and even whole shots and scenes feeling airlifted from your favorite Disney movies. Perhaps Star Wars has just been part of the Disney corporate multiverse for so long now that it’s starting to seep into its storytelling too. Or maybe if you’re the showrunner of a Disney Plus production you get a free subscription and that’s just how Filoni filled his weekends in between writing scripts.

The Little Mermaid

Ahsoka kicks the ground running with its Disney callbacks by recreating a scene we only just saw already recreated on our screens this past spring. When Governor Azadi announces Sabine to the Lothal crowd during a ceremony, she’s nowhere to be found, because she’s off mooning about the loss of Ezra. This is extremely similar to the beginning of The Little Mermaid, wherein Ariel angers her father because she misses a ceremony as she’s distracted by humans, and incidentally later moons over a boy (Eric, not Ezra).

Tangled

On top of Ariel, Sabine is also channeling Rapunzel when we catch up with her at the beginning of Ahsoka. She’s living in a room at the very top of a tower, which is pretty much prime fairy tale princess real estate. What’s more, she’s even got her own adorable animal sidekick in the form of her Loth-cat, whose disappearance from the rest of the series we will never forgive or forget.

Treasure Planet

Star Wars‘ obsession with lost objects that are secretly treasure maps — i.e. holocrons — is nothing new, but Ahsoka‘s variation on the common theme takes a sharp turn into Treasure Planet territory. The sphere that the villains seek to lead the way to Peridia, which projects a holographic map when unlocked, is virtually identical in both form and function to the orb that leads Jim Hawkins to his own galactic adventure.

Mulan

It is impossible to watch that moment in episode 2, when Sabine cuts off her long hair in one stroke of a blade, and not think of Mulan. Unless, for some reason, you have only seen the tedious 2020 version which bizarrely cut out this iconic moment from the original (no, I will never get over that). Can anyone edit the Ahsoka scene with the spine-tingling synth score from 1998’s Mulan over the top? Please and thank you.

The Lion King

Disney protagonists often have daddy issues, and Ahsoka’s complex relationship with the memory of her mentor Anakin Skywalker definitely feels part and parcel of that. Specifically, across episodes 4 and 5, she even interacts with a vision and/or ghost of her father figure, with Hayden Christensen’s return as Anakin. This is more than a little reminiscent of Simba’s supernatural family reunion in The Lion King (with Mufasa, of course, being played by fellow Darth Vader actor, James Earl Jones).

Frozen II

There’s definitely some spiritual connectivity between Elsa’s elemental powers and the Force, and episode 5 brings this to the fore. Thanks to the mystical World Between Worlds, Ahsoka is able to relive and recontextualize her past. Likewise, in Frozen II, Elsa journeys to her ice castle/Fortress of Solitude and receives frosty visions of old events. Interestingly, while Ahsoka’s experience is able to help her the good about Anakin, Elsa discovers the evil in her own family tree.

Pinocchio

Ahsoka gets very 1:1 with its Disney allusions in the next episode as Ahsoka and pals are swallowed by a space whale — a purrgil, to be precise — which is how they journey to the other galaxy. No prizes for guessing which Disney movie this recalls, as it obviously brings to mind Pinocchio and Geppetto getting swallowed by Monstro in both the 1940 original and the 2022 remake that definitely didn’t need to be made.

Hercules

Likewise, Ahsoka episode 6 doesn’t even try to be subtle about stealing its homework. The Great Mothers are very clearly modeled on the Three Fates, what with their witchy/crone-like appearances and their talk of the “thread of destiny.” To be fair, Disney’s Hercules was ripping off Greek myths as well, though, and at least Ahsoka‘s have more than one eye between them. Sadly, going by the lack of bathrooms of Peridia, the Great Mothers don’t seem to share the Fates’ belief in the importance of indoor plumbing either.

Frozen

In one Disney-made production, a hermitic guy is followed back to his home by a female friend of his and it turns out he lives with a bunch of diminutive creatures who can disguise themselves as rocks. Now, am I discovering Sabine’s reunion with Ezra in Ahsoka episode 6 or the “Fixer Upper” scene from Frozen? Trick question, it’s both. After being stuck on Peridia for a decade, Ezra probably had a desperation for healing hugs as well.

The Chronicles of Narnia

OK, so The Chronicles of Narnia is obviously not a Disney animated movie, but Disney did produce two out of three of the live-action movies, so this one counts. The Ahsoka finale is titled “The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord,” which is a surprisingly on-the-nose pastiche of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Ironically, this wasn’t the Disney Plus finale to bring back Liam Neeson (aka the voice of Aslan) as Qui-Gon Jinn — that was Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Over three decades since the classic animated movie premiered, The Little Mermaid is back on the public’s minds. Of course, this is merely the result of its successful live-action remake, which has risen above the racist backlash to conquer the hearts of most Disney fans.

Make no mistake, despite being an adaptation, the live-action film is in no way a scene-by-scene copy of the original, thankfully. In fact, Disney managed to strike a good balance between staying true to its roots and switching things up enough to keep things fresh. While most changes are obvious to all dedicated fans of the 1989 version, though, sometimes memory fails us when we need it the most.

This seems to be the case regarding a character in the films — King Triton. Ariel’s father exhibits overprotective tendencies in both versions of the age-old tale, but there is a particular aspect of his story arc that causes confusion to some. Does Triton die at Ursula’s hands? She clearly doesn’t like to take things easy on anyone, but what exactly happened in this case, and how does it compare to the original?

Does Triton die in The Little Mermaid?

In The Little Mermaid’s live-action, Triton suffers a darker fate than in the original, which perfectly matches Ursula’s personal vendetta against him. Toward the end of the movie, as Ariel and Eric fight for their lives, the sea witch orders her trusty eel companions to shock Triton, and so they do. This results in the king’s body breaking apart as he turns to dust, dying for a short period of time. When Ariel defeats Ursula, however, her father’s body is magically restored. So, the answer to the question of whether or not he died in the remake is technically yes, but not permanently.

In the original film, though, the king’s story goes a little differently. Instead of killing Triton during the final confrontation, Ursula simply uses her magic to turn him into a sea creature. Thus, the character never actually dies in the 1989 The Little Mermaid, but the scene certainly provokes the same feeling of loss in Ariel, who witnesses it all play out. Much like in the remake, King Triton magically acquires his merperson body back once Ursula is killed in the battle, and lives long enough to show up on The Little Mermaid sequel.

Children’s movies can sometimes deal brutal emotional punches — yes, I’m talking about Bambi, specifically — but at least where King Triton is concerned, there’s nothing to worry about.

You can rewatch The Little Mermaid as many times as you want now, as it’s finally available for streaming on Disney Plus.

The star of “The Scuttlebutt” and a breakout character for the live-action version of The Little Mermaid, Scuttle has been everyone’s favorite wise-cracking bird since 1989. Back then, he was voiced by the late Buddy Hackett. In fact, Hackett’s return as Scuttle for The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea marked his final film role before he died of complications from heart disease in 2003.

Twenty years post-Hackett, Scuttle has been reimagined with a new look and a new voice — a female one at that. And who provides that voice? None other than Awkwafina, whose real name is Nora Lum.

Awkwafina rose to prominence in 2012 when her rap song “My Vag” became popular on YouTube. Ever since, she’s made a name for herself in the acting industry, starring in Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon, Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and even the insanely popular comedy-romance Crazy Rich Asians.

In the 1989 original movie, Scuttle is a seagull. In Rob Marshall’s live-action adaptation, Scuttle’s character design was changed to a Northern gannet, a species of bird that can remain underwater for up to 30 seconds while hunting for prey. The justification for the swap could be the amount of underwater scenes featuring Ariel and Scuttle that wouldn’t be possible for a seagull.

Marshall explains the change to The News International, saying it aligns with Ariel’s story.

“After she sings ‘Part of Your World’ and she goes [to the surface] for the first time, it’s so shocking and so thrilling. It’s better storytelling.

But then I realized, well, Scuttle, how does she know everything that’s up there? We decided to make her a diving bird so that she could come down and Ariel could meet Scuttle in the water and get all that information there, not above.”

Not everyone was sold on Awkwafina’s addition to the cast, but “depending on personal preference, her duet rap song with Daveed Diggs — “The Scuttlebutt” — is undeniably catchy, whether you love it or hate it.

The Mouse House’s movies have always taught us that, just when they seem down for the count, Disney princesses will win out in the end, and that’s exactly what’s happened with 2023’s The Little Mermaid. The live-action remake of the beloved 1990 animation was beset with small-minded but loud-mouthed backlash in the run-up to and throughout its theatrical run due to the hiring of the (phenomenally talented and perfectly cast) Halle Bailey as the previously Caucasian Ariel.

While it’s hard to say how much that impacted the film’s slightly underwhelming domestic box office gross, it certainly did internationally, with several Asian markets dismissing the film due to its diverse cast — although that doesn’t include the Philippines where it was a huge hit. Thankfully, The Little Mermaid is having the last laugh as it swims onto streaming around the globe. Across its first week on Disney Plus, it managed to accrue 16 million views, which makes it the platform’s largest debut of 2023 and one of its biggest ever.

Clearly, now that it’s able to be watched at home, The Little Mermaid is finding a whole new audience to enchant, likely including a young generation who — for whatever reason — might not have had the chance to see it on the big screen. As one spot-on reaction to the news of its Disney Plus success put it, “The racist parents who didn’t want to take their kids to see The Little Mermaid in [theater], couldn’t stop their children from watching it at home.”

Unfortunately, due to its enormous $265 million price tag, even earning just shy of $570 million around the world (a recent re-release didn’t quite move the needle as planned) and going down as the seventh highest-grossing of Disney’s remakes to date meant The Little Mermaid‘s theatrical run was something of a disappointment. However, its warm reception on streaming proves that Bailey’s Ariel may have lost the initial battle but she’ll win the war and likely continue to delight audiences for years to come, much like Jodi Benson did before her.