Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid features some truly stunning filming locations but where exactly was the movie filmed?
Unlike in the world of animated movies, where the work of the animators brings a film’s characters and setting to life, Disney’s recent live-action adaptations have relied heavily on filming locations to add some authenticity to the respective projects.
The film was filmed in a number of picturesque locations, including the beautiful beaches and mountains.
The Little Mermaid plot and release date preview
The Little Mermaid live-action remake will be in theaters Friday, 26 May 2023.
The Little Mermaid is set in 1830s in and around the water of a fictional Caribbean island. Ariel (18 years old) has a beautiful voice, and she’s always been interested in human life.
Ariel is forbidden by her father King Triton to interact with people. But the passionate mermaid becomes infatuated when she meets Eric. She saves him from drowning after his ship was destroyed during a storm.
Ariel agrees, with Ursula’s help, to exchange her voice for the legs of an adult in order to reunite with Eric.
However, the scheming Ursula has her own nefarious intentions and if Ariel doesn’t receive true love’s kiss by the end of the third day, the little mermaid will belong to the sea witch for all eternity.
The Little Mermaid filming location
The adaptation 2023 of The Little Mermaid has been filmed in Pinewood Studios, the United Kingdom and on Sardinia Island off the coasts of Italy.
The original plan was to film the movie in 2020. However, due to Covid-19 outbreaks the start of production had to be postponed. The production began January 30th, 2021. It lasted for a little over six months up until July 11th.
Pinewood Studios will have been home to much of the film’s underwater filming, which would need supplementing with visual effects, as well housing sets for interior scenes such as rooms within Eric’s castle.
Meanwhile, the picturesque island of Sardinia features in many exterior and coastal scenes as Ariel first encounters Prince Eric and later gets to know him as they explore the film’s fictional Caribbean island together.
Sardinia has been a popular location with film crews for years, with the island featuring in productions such as Netflix’s Red Notice, the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, 2001’s Hannibal, Jason Statham-starring The Bank Job and the 2019 TV series Catch-22 among others.
Explore the Caribbean Setting
The filmmakers confirmed the location of the live action film, which is based on a fictional island in the Caribbean.
This differs from both the original Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale and Disney’s 1989 animated film as the exact setting is never confirmed.
Many fans and scholars have speculated for years about the original setting of The Little Mermaid. They include locations like Denmark, Norway, and Spain in Scandinavia, or Italy, Spain, and southern France on the Mediterranean.
As explained in a press release for the film, the decision to set the live-action Little Mermaid in the Caribbean stems from Sebastian’s accent and the flavor of the songs in the original film.
Speaking about the setting, production designer, John Myhre, said: “We had this fun job of being able to create, for the first time, a Caribbean castle.
“One of the first things we thought about was the way air flows through a building, so except for Eric’s library, there are almost no windows in the entire space, and what openings there are reminiscent of watery and wave-like shapes.
“We started from this bleached-out kind of feeling of some of the castles from the South of France and the coast of Italy, and we were looking to create something that had that feeling of a sea-washed castle but also had a colonial, Caribbean feel.”
The Little Mermaid 2023 adaption is Out now at cinemas After releasing Friday, May 26 2023.