Disney are a smart bunch of cookies with all their superheroes, franchises and theme parks but you cannot help but marvel at their new trend of remaking their classic animations as live-action movies. And with that in mind they’ve done even better with the seemingly perfect cast coming together for their latest version of Beauty And The Beast.
The film, which is being directed by Twilight Breaking Dawn’s Bill Condon, is sticking closely to the animated version of events with Emma Watson playing Belle who trades place with her father Maurice, who has just been cast as Kevin Kline, to live in the home of a cursed prince who has taken on the form of a Beast. And when you need someone to do both charming and beastly who better to turn to than The Guest and former Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens? All the while the advances of dastardly Gaston, played with hopefully moustache twisting menace by Luke Evans, will threaten both Belle and The Beast’s romance.
As if that cast weren’t enough to get you all happy and spinning round a gold-leafed ballroom Emma Thompson has now come on board to voice Mrs. Potts, the magic talking teapot (if there isn’t some kind of motion-capture involved in that we’ll be upset) with Frozen’s Josh Gad playing Gaston’s bumbling assistant Le Fou.
The script has been written by Watson’s Perks Of Being A Wallflower cohort Stephen Chbosky and will include re-recordings of the classic Disney animated movie written by Sir Tim Rice and Alan Menken.
The question is this; can you think of a film that has got its casting so seemingly spot-on before the cameras have even rolled? We can’t. Filming will start at Shepperton Studios this May with the aim to release the film in March 2017. Source – The Wrap