First it was Angelina Jolie in the Maleficent movies, now it’s Emma Stone in Cruella. It seems like it won’t be long, then, before Disney develops another live-action solo film for one of their iconic animated villains. But which one should get the treatment next? Stone herself has now cast her vote on who she wants to see star in their own origins story and it happens to be a character who’s on their way to live-action soon anyway.
While speaking to Variety, the actress was asked for her pick for the next Disney villain movie and she chose Ursula the sea witch, the nemesis of Ariel in The Little Mermaid. The Oscar-nominated actress went with Ursula as she thinks it would be fun to explore her upbringing under the sea.
“She’s an octopus and the world you would get to live in, like Ursula’s parents and what happened there – you’ve never really seen a non-human Disney villain be explored in that way.”
Stone’s suggestion could actually be a pretty smart pitch as, like we said above, Ursula is coming to live-action soon as it is. Melissa McCarthy is bringing the duplicitous sorceress to life in the upcoming Little Mermaid remake, which is in production now. If that turns out to be a hit, then a Disney Plus spinoff focusing on the villain’s early days feels like a very feasible option, similar to the Beauty and the Beast prequel series about Gaston that’s on the way.
Early drafts of the original 1989 flick depicted Ursula as Ariel’s aunt, King Triton’s sister, which adds extra context to her schemes to steal the throne of Atlantica. It’s currently unclear if the remake will revisit this backstory, but it would be a neat thing to explore in a spinoff. Obviously, this is just an off-the-cuff response from Stone, and we shouldn’t take it as a hint that it’s actually happening, but she’s definitely come up with a strong idea in her proposed Ursula spinoff.
Cruella is now available in theaters and on Disney Plus, and The Little Mermaid remake is coming sometime in 2022.