‘The Little Mermaid’ Director Says Disney Needs to Change and Prioritize Awakening

John Musker — who directed the animated versions of “The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin” and “Moana” — called out the content giant in an interview with El País …basically saying that Disney tried too hard to get their message across.

JM says: “I think they need to correct course a bit by putting the message second, behind entertainment, a compelling story and engaging characters.”

To be fair, Musker isn’t calling for woke movies to be made by name…but, read between the lines and you can see that he thinks his former employer pushed his priorities backwards.

He even brings up the most recent adaptation of “The Little Mermaid”… telling EP he thinks the remake lost a little something when they downplayed the father-daughter dynamic – while blowing out the CGI Sebastian the Crab.

John directed “The Princess and the Frog” BTW…and he makes it clear that he’s not saying diversity isn’t important in animation — just that creators shouldn’t sacrifice a quality script to check a few boxes.

As for the new live-action Moana movie coming out… Musker says he has nothing to do with the movie – but he hopes it does well.