Welp, it was nice while it lasted: human-maid Sofia Coppola has exited Universal’s live-action The Little Mermaid over what Deadline describes as “creative differences.”
Coppola became attached to the Universal project last year after early favorite Joe Wright dropped out (whitewashing Pan‘s Tiger Lily is time consuming, I guess); the project would have been her first big studio picture.
Deadline reports that previous drafts have been written by Fifty Shades of Grey’s Kelly Marcel and Shame scribe Abi Morgan, which seems like a clear indicator that Universal’s Little Mermaid will be a departure from the character popularized by Disney–when your screenwriters are best known for movies about misogynists and sex addicts, your movie probably won’t have a wisecracking crab. (Probably: Indiewire does say that The Nightmare Before Christmas writer Caroline Thompson has also had a hand in rewrites.)
At least we’ll always have A Very Murray Christmas. In the meantime, who would you like to see take Coppola’s place at Little Mermaid‘s (MurrayMaid‘s) helm?
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