So it’s true! After months of agonising hearsay, pop artthrob Harry Styles has finally confirmed that he was in the running – perhaps even Disney’s top choice – to play Prince Eric in the upcoming remake of The Little Mermaid. But before you get too excited about that, it seems it was not meant to be. I know, we’re heartbroken too.
The role of Eric (which hasn’t been formally cast yet) seems to have landed on Harry’s lap earlier in the year. In a cute FaceTime interview with British pop radio station Capital, the “Sign of the Times” star told the presenters that he met with the film’s director Rob Marshall, who he calls “the most wonderful man”, but that there were a few things that meant he wouldn’t be able to commit to the role.
See, though Harry “thinks it’s going to be amazing”, the film would slice right through a whole year of new music and — though he seems hesitant to admit it since no formal announcement has been made — other plans too. He tried to bluff his way out of the question before slowly caving: “[Those films] shoot for so long, and I wanna tour next year and stuff,” he says, before noticing his own slip-up. To try and cover his tracks, he added, “Maybe, I don’t know, that’s potentially not… it hasn’t been announced yet so” to the end of his sentence, before moving on to the next question.
At this point, another Harry Styles world tour was a given, but the nugget of information sent Styles fans across the internet into a frenzy nonetheless. Following the release of his comeback single “Lights Up”, which made our hearts swell to breaking point when it dropped earlier this month, he’s expected to drop an album at some point in the very near future (an early Christmas present, plz?).
Either way, it would’ve been quite nice to have been blessed with both at the same time, like the delicious double-bill of Dunkirk and his excellent debut record going stratospheric around the same time. Turns out we’ll just have to wait a little bit longer for Harry’s return to the big screen. In the meantime, guess we’ll just camp out for tour tickets.