While its international box office is sadly in a poor, unfortunate place, The Little Mermaid swam its way to a mega-successful domestic opening, earning a total of $118.8 million across the four-day weekend to make it the fifth-highest Memorial Day weekend launch in cinema history. So it’s easy to imagine that Disney bigwigs are starting to whisper about potentially returning to Atlantica in a sequel. And if such a thing is in the cards, luckily for the studio an animated template is ready and waiting for them.
2000’s The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea — a straight-to-home-video follow-up to the 1989 original — takes the intriguing route of flipping the status quo from the first film. Jumping ahead twelve years, Ariel and Eric’s daughter Melody, unaware of her true mermaid heritage, is forbidden from entering the water. The reason why is because Ursula’s equally evil sister Morgana has promised to kill Melody as revenge for her sister’s death if she ever gets her tentacles on her.
Spoilers! — yes, as per the animation, Ursula does indeed die in 2023’s The Little Mermaid, meaning that Melissa McCarthy sadly couldn’t return for a potential sequel. In casting a live-action Morgana, then, Disney would have its work cut out finding someone who could bring the same kind of over-the-top energy to the role as their on-screen sis did. Especially considering Pat Carroll played both Ursula and Morgana in the animated films.
So someone with a similar background to McCarthy in smash-hit comedy movies would be a smart choice. Maybe even someone who’s starred opposite McCarthy in one such movie. And playing a villain in a DC flick opposite Disney’s next fairy tale antagonist Gal Gadot probably doesn’t hurt either. Yes, the one and only choice to play Morgana in a live-action Little Mermaid II has to be Kristen Wiig. It’s easy to imagine Wiig having as much of a blast playing Morgana as McCarthy did as Ursula.
So far, Disney has made surprisingly few sequels to its live-action remakes — only two, in fact: Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and Alice Through the Looking Glass — but The Little Mermaid could always break that trend. And if it does, feel free to run with this casting suggestion, fellas. I only ask for 10 percent of the box office gross in exchange.