Emma Stone has revealed that she would like to see Ursula, the main antagonist of the 1989 animated musical film The Little Mermaid, get her own standalone movie that focused on her origin story. Stone portrays the title character in the 2021 black comedy crime film Cruella directed by Craig Gillespie, which serves as an origin story for Cruella De Vil, the iconic main antagonist of the 1961 Disney animated film One Hundred and One Dalmatians.
Cruella De Vil is the second Disney villain to get their own movie that centers around their origin story, with the first being Maleficent, who received her own movie of the same name directed by Robert Stromberg in 2014. However, unlike Maleficent, Cruella has received more positive reviews from both fans and critics, who praised the cinematography, darker atmosphere and performances from Stone as the title character and Emma Thompson as the main antagonist of the movie Baroness Von Hellman.
Alongside several other cast members in the film, Stone chose the character Ursula when asked during an interview which Disney villain she would like to see get their own standalone origin story movie. Stone pointed out that Ursula would be a unique villain to get her own movie, as she is not human which opens up several possibilities. “She’s an octopus and the world you would get to live in, like Ursula’s parents and what happened there,” she told Variety. “You’ve never really seen a non-human Disney villain be explored in that way.”
Thompson agreed with the concept of an Ursula movie, joking that her octopus-like body would be a nightmare for her parents. “The parents keep giving her a shirt that only has four arms. They really mess her up with that from a very early age, so she’s constantly trying to fit two arms into each hole. That would really mess you up, wouldn’t it?”
Despite Stone’s desire to see Ursula get her own film, the character will be portrayed by Melissa McCarthy when she appears in the upcoming live-action remake of The Little Mermaid.
