The Little Mermaid (1989 film)
1989 animated film directed by John Musker and Ron Clements
The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American animated musical fantasy film written and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements and produced by Musker and Howard Ashman, who also wrote the film's songs with composer Alan Menken. Loosely based on the 1837 Danish fairy tale "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Andersen, it was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation in association with Silver Screen Partners IV and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film features the voices of René Auberjonois, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Jodi Benson, Pat Carroll, Paddi Edwards, Buddy Hackett, Jason Marin, Kenneth Mars, Ben Wright, and Samuel E. Wright. The story follows a teenage mermaid princess named Ariel (Benson) who dreams of becoming human and falls in love with a human prince named Eric (Barnes), which leads her to forge an agreement with the sea witch Ursula (Carroll) to be with him.
Walt Disney planned to put the story in a proposed package film containing Andersen's stories, but he scrapped the project. In 1985, while working on The Great Mouse Detective (1986), Clements and Musker decided to adapt the fairy tale. They proposed it to Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, who initially declined because of its similarities to a proposed sequel to the 1984 film Splash, but ultimately approved it. Ashman became involved, and brought in Menken. With supervision from Katzenberg, they made a Broadway-style structure with musical numbers as the staff was working on Oliver & Company (1988). Katzenberg warned that the film would earn less since it appealed to female viewers, but he eventually became convinced that it would be another blockbuster hit for the company.
“The Little Mermaid (1989 film)” enters the record as 1989 animated film directed by John Musker and Ron Clements. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Little, Mermaid and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q190135. VIAF identifies the subject as 229341071. 7 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1837, 1985 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Little Mermaid (1989 film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.