How long is The Little Mermaid?
The Little Mermaid is out now in cinemas, bringing the beloved Hans Christian Anderson story to the screen in a live action reboot of the Disney animated classic from 1989.
The new movie, starring Halle Bailey as mermaid Ariel, runs for a confirmed 135 minutes, or two-and-a-quarter hours. That makes it nearly a whole hour longer than the animated original, which was just 83 minutes (one hour and 23 minutes) long.
It is also substantially longer than some of the other live action movies based on classic Disney animation that have been released in recent years. Disney’s 2015 Cinderella was half an hour shorter (105 mins) than The Little Mermaid, and other live action re-imaginings including 2019’s The Lion King, 2016’s The Jungle Book, 2019’s Dumbo, 2020’s Mulan and last year’s Pinocchio with Tom Hanks all came in with a running time of under two hours.
Only 2017’s Beauty and the Beast (129 mins) and 2019’s Aladdin (128 mins) have been more than two hours long, but The Little Mermaid beats them both to the title of longest Disney live action adaptation to date.
However, early reactions, and our own Digital Spy review, promise that almost every minute of The Little Mermaid’s runtime is worth it.
The longer running time allows for new songs (including the lovely ‘For the First Time’), a fleshed out storyline, fully realised characters (hooray for Prince Eric and his new personality!), as well as a better look at life under the sea. There are new scenes that show Ariel falling in love with the land above (rather than just falling for Eric) and said Prince even gets his own tune, 'Wild Uncharted Waters', broodingly sung from a clifftop and on a boat as if he was in a 1980s Duran Duran video.
While the lengthy running time means that Ariel and Eric’s stories are played out in much more detail, director Rob Marshall believes there is still more to be told, and hasn’t ruled out the possibility of a sequel.
Speaking to Total Film magazine (via GamesRadar), he said, “I know there have been the prequels and sequels to the animated film – like, the straight-to-video kind of things, you know?”
“It’s a classic story that has a lot of characters and a lot of interesting stories. I do think it’s right for certain things… I think there’s always opportunity to find stories within stories. That’s always a wonderful thing.”
The Little Mermaid is out now in cinemas.
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