Live network musicals are still pretty hit and miss, and some don’t get the chance to have their voices heard. Case in point, The Little Mermaid will remain under the sea ABC for the time being, cancelling October plans for a live adaptation.

ABC announced Thursday that its planned Little Mermaid adaptation would be delayed from an October 3 curtain-call, aiming instead for 2018 (if at all). The project was announced in May, with planned “celebrity artists” to perform Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s 1989 film songs, though ABC offered no definitive explanation for the delay:

We are postponing the Little Mermaid Live! special. We love the idea of doing a live musical and want to make it wonderful. The project is so unique that we are making best efforts to do it next year and want to give it all the attention it deserves.

Done + Dusted was to produce the special, as executive produced by Hamish Hamilton, Ian Stewart, David Jammy, Katy Mullan and Richard Kraft. It’s unclear if ABC’s change of plans has anything to do with Disney’s intended live-action Little Mermaid, as shepherded by Menken and Hamilton / Moana vet Lin-Manuel Miranda.

We’d barely gotten enough sense of ABC’s The Little Mermaid Live! to lament its loss, but will it ever be part of our world?

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