The Little Mermaid is a fairy tale about a young mermaid who is willing to give up everything to gain the love of a prince and an eternal soul. The story was written by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, and was first published in 1836.
The movie The Little Mermaid is the twenty-eighth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon. Based upon the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale "The Little Mermaid", the film was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation.
In 1985, "The Great Mouse Detective" co-director Ron Clements discovered a collection of Hans C. Anderson's fairy tales while browsing a bookstore. He presented a two-page draft of a movie based on "The Little Mermaid" to CEO Michael Eisner, who passed it over, because at that time the studio was in development on a sequel to Splash. But the next day, Walt Disney Pictures boss Jeffrey Katzenberg, green-lighted the idea for possible development, along with "Oliver & Company".
The Little Mermaid was first released on November 15, 1989. Grossing over $111 million in the U.S. and an additional $99 million worldwide, the film is given credit for breathing life back into the animated feature film genre after a string of critical and commercial failures and later, some low successes (The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, and Oliver & Company). In addition, The Little Mermaid signaled the start of a decade-long period of successful Disney movies, The Rescuers Down Under (1990) being the only exception. The film won two Academy Awards, one for best original score and another for best original song (Under the Sea).
The Little Mermaid features the voices of Jodi Benson as Ariel, Pat Caroll as Ursula, Christopher Daniel Barnes as Prince Eric, Ben Wright as Grimsby, Buddy Hackett as Scuttle and Rene Auberjonois as Chef Louis.
The Little Mermaid was re-released in 1997 and was followed by a direct-to-video sequel entitled Return to the Sea in 2000, as well as an animated series, which premiered in late 1992. A second direct-to-video sequel called The Little Mermaid III is currently in development for a 2008 release.
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