Where was The Little Mermaid filmed? Locations of 2023 movie explored

The same can be said for the 2023 remake of The Little Mermaid which ventured to some picturesque locations during shooting but where exactly was the movie filmed?  

The Little Mermaid release date and plot preview

The live-action remake of The Little Mermaid swam into theaters on Friday, May 26, 2023.

Set in the 1830s, in and around the waters of a fictitious Caribbean island, The Little Mermaid follows 18-year-old Ariel, a mermaid with a beautiful voice and a thirst for adventure, who has an unwavering interest in the human world above.

Her father, King Triton, forbids Ariel from interacting with humans but the spirited mermaid finds herself infatuated with a young prince, Eric, whom she saves when his ship is destroyed in a storm.

In the hopes of reuniting with Eric and learning more about his world, Ariel makes a dangerous deal with the sea witch, Ursula, as she agrees to give up her voice in exchange for human legs.

However, the scheming Ursula has her own nefarious intentions and if Ariel doesn’t receive true love’s kiss by the end of the third day, the little mermaid will belong to the sea witch for all eternity.

Where was The Little Mermaid filmed?

The 2023 adaptation of The Little Mermaid was filmed at Pinewood Studios in the United Kingdom as well as on the island of Sardinia off the coast of Italy.

Filming on the project was originally scheduled to begin in early 2020 but had to be delayed due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Eventually, production finally began on January 30, 2021, and ran for just under six months until July 11.

Pinewood Studios will have been home to much of the film’s underwater filming, which would need supplementing with visual effects, as well housing sets for interior scenes such as rooms within Eric’s castle.

Meanwhile, the picturesque island of Sardinia features in many exterior and coastal scenes as Ariel first encounters Prince Eric and later gets to know him as they explore the film’s fictional Caribbean island together.

Sardinia has been a popular location with film crews for years, with the island featuring in productions such as Netflix’s Red Notice, the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, 2001’s Hannibal, Jason Statham-starring The Bank Job and the 2019 TV series Catch-22 among others.

The Caribbean setting explored

One of the biggest changes between the original Little Mermaid and the remake is that the filmmakers have confirmed that the live-action film is set on and around a fictitious island in the Caribbean.

This differs from both the original Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale and Disney’s 1989 animated film as the exact setting is never confirmed.

Fans and academics have long since speculated about where The Little Mermaid was originally set, with many divided between locations such as Denmark and Norway in Scandinavia or Italy, Spain and southern France in the Mediterranean.

As explained in a press release for the film, the decision to set the live-action Little Mermaid in the Caribbean stems from Sebastian’s accent and the flavor of the songs in the original film.

Speaking about the setting, production designer, John Myhre, said: “We had this fun job of being able to create, for the first time, a Caribbean castle.

“One of the first things we thought about was the way air flows through a building, so except for Eric’s library, there are almost no windows in the entire space, and what openings there are reminiscent of watery and wave-like shapes.

“We started from this bleached-out kind of feeling of some of the castles from the South of France and the coast of Italy, and we were looking to create something that had that feeling of a sea-washed castle but also had a colonial, Caribbean feel.”

The 2023 adaptation of The Little Mermaid is out now in cinemas after releasing on Friday, May 26, 2023.

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