See The Little Mermaid come to life in 10 exclusive photos

Weathering the storm

Ariel and Eric's love story begins with a casual near-death experience.

Played by Grammy nominee Halle Bailey, the titular Little Mermaid of Disney's live-action/CG reimagining saves the land-dwelling prince (Jonah Hauer-King) from drowning in a shipwreck one dark and stormy night.

EW has an exclusive look at this scene, as well as nine other photos from the film (set to release on May 26) as part of our latest cover story.

Washed ashore

The aftermath of the shipwreck sees Ariel carrying an unconscious Eric to shore. It's a moment that further sparks the mer-maiden's fascination with the above world and sets the handsome royal on a mission to find his mysterious savior.

Treading water

The Little Mermaid director Rob Marshall isn't afraid to get wet on location in Italy if it means getting the right shot.

Finding Eric's voice

Hauer-King says Prince Eric is a more fully dimensional character in the live-action film compared to what we see in the animated original of 1989.

"We all know him as this charming, romantic, charismatic guy in the cartoon, but we wanted to go deeper," the actor explains. "I really understood him as this very adventurous but quite restless spirit who didn't feel fully at home in his own home, and felt quite trapped and restricted behind the four walls of the castle, and was really about looking outwards rather than inwards."

King of the seas

Javier Bardem plays King Triton, ruler of his oceanic domain and father of Ariel, his youngest daughter. The above world is considered off limits to mer-folk, though Bardem tells EW Triton's frustrations with Ariel are more over the fear of losing his child.

"She's going to leave the nest very soon, and that relationship between the love and fear for her wellbeing had to be very present in the relationship," the actor says. "I love that idea because that's so relatable for every father."

Twisted sister

Triton's sister — and Ariel's aunt — is the sea witch Ursula, played by Melissa McCarthy. Powered by magic, the tentacled enchantress manipulates Ariel into striking a bargain, one that will give her legs to walk on land in exchange for her voice.

Queen Selina

EW has an exclusive first look at Harry Potter and the Cursed Child star Noma Dumezweni as Queen Selina, mother of Prince Eric.

"It's this sense of the babies being two outsiders of their origin story and then finding each other," Dumezweni says. "So Eric being mothered and grown by a woman who looks like me on an island and you hear that story, and then you look at Ariel and her family and she being the outsider of that. There's that sense of, 'We recognize each other when we know what each other's been through.'"

Finding her footing

Multiple new songs were composed for this new Little Mermaid, with music by the animated film's composer Alan Menken and lyrics by Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. One such song is "For the First Time," a new piece for Ariel to sing as she tours the above world kingdom with Eric.

Kindred spirits

Not only does Hauer-King describe Ariel and Eric as "kindred spirits," he sees himself that way with Bailey. "Speaking about her personally, I could not have done [the film] without her," he says. "She was such a supportive and kind presence."

He adds, "We became very, very close friends — and still are."

Siren sounds

Daveed Diggs voices the crab Sebastian in The Little Mermaid. Here he's seen with Miranda, who also composed lyrics for an original song called "Scuttlebutt," a duet between Diggs' Sebastian and Awkwafina's seagull Scuttle.

"It's the most deliciously ADHD runaway train of thought," Miranda says of the tune. "There's tangents inside of tangents."

Read more about The Little Mermaid in EW's cover story. The film opens in theaters May 26.