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25 May

How Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” modified the course of

Comment on this storyCommentBefore the 1989 release of “The Little Mermaid,” Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg desired to temper expectations. So he met with the movie’s writer-directors, John Musker and Ron Clements, to deliver a decidedly un-Disney-fied message: Don’t get your hopes up.“It’s getting there,” Katzenberg told the creative duo after screening a next-to-final cut of the animated fairy tale, The Walt Disney Company’s first since “Sleeping Beauty” three many years earlier. All right, cool, Musker and Clements could take that. But Katzenberg’s next comment stung slightly.“You already know this movie’s not going to do in addition to ‘Oliver and Company’ — and that’s okay,” said Katzenberg. Once they asked why, the studio chief was matter-of-fact.“It’s a lady’s movie,...
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