Disney’s continuing with their live-action remakes of favorite animated classics—most recently Aladdin, currently in theaters, as well as The Lion King, starring Beyoncé and Donald Glover and set to come out July 19. Also on the slate? A revival of The Little Mermaid, which will likely have a similarly star-studded cast. Of course, people are watching closely to find out who’s going to be playing their favorite characters from the original 1989 film, and one reported potential casting is spurring some conversation on Twitter. According to Variety on Friday, Melissa McCarthy is in “early talks” to play the very memorable Ursula, and while a lot of people are thrilled—she’s hilarious, after all!—others on Twitter have some thoughts about it.

Some bring up the point that in the original Disney film, Ursula was inspired by the late drag queen Divine—so for Disney to skip picking an LGBTQ+ actor or drag queen for the role is to miss an opportunity for greater representation, especially with the news coming at the end of Pride Month. (Although inspired by Divine, Ursula was originally voiced in the 1989 movie by Pat Carroll, a cisgender white woman.) Top names on Twitter for the casting include Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt‘s Tituss Burgess, Danielle Brooks, TS Madison, and pop singer Lizzo, who has been a guest judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race and is a strong ally of the LGBTQ+ community.

Lizzo actually posted an audition video for the film last year to Twitter.

She reacted to the news of McCarthy’s reported casting with the pleading face emoji:

A lot of people would also really, really like Ginger Minj, a runner-up on season seven of RuPaul’s Drag Race, to play Ursula.

She had her thoughts about the news, too:

Another Twitter favorite for the role is Tituss Burguss:

Like Lizzo, he basically already has an audition tape:

We’re still waiting to hear about the rest of the casting, but last October, Zendaya responded to rumors that she’d been offered the role of Ariel. “It’s just the rumor, so we will see,” she told People at the time, adding that The Little Mermaid had been one of her favorite movies as a little kid.

As far as what we know about the rest of the movie, a few details have been finalized: Per Variety, Mary Poppins Returns director Rob Marshall is leading the project, and Lin-Manuel Miranda is working on some new songs for the movie with the first movie’s original songwriter, Alan Menken. (Don’t worry, the classic songs will still be in there too.)

Of course, nothing about casting Ursula is set in stone yet. According to Variety, no final decisions have been made, and no contracts have been signed—so we’ll have to wait and see.

Source link