Disney’s live action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast feature sounds impossible. How does one turn Ewan McGregor into a singing, French candlestick and Ian McKellen into a worrisome clock? And what does a live-action beast look like anyway? Today Disney dropped the first look at its impossible film, and already things are starting to look a bit more believable.
Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) is the director of the singing and dancing live-action Beauty and the Beast flick. Emma Watson and Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) both star in the title roles.
The world got the tiniest glimpse of the movie musical (yes, there will be singing and dancing of all the classic Disney tunes) when Luke Evans (who is cast as the villain Gaston) sang his theme song with Hugh Jackman on The Jonathan Ross Show. Evans actually starts out rather timid but then takes the whole thing over when it starts to go off the rails, as if it were impossible not to sing along.
And now Disney has revealed the first official glimpse into the very real fantasy world it’s attempting to create with a short teaser trailer. The glimpse pulls hard on the two things this movie already has going for it, the magnificent score from Alan Menken and nostalgia by re-creating the swirling prologue from the original. They even have the slashed portrait of the beast in human form.
There’s also a glimpse of the famous ballroom, now empty and possibly covered in icicles, a look at the magical rose that warns the Beast of his own doom and a short shot of Belle.
Unfortunately the members of the castle’s household (including Emma Thompson, who will be playing Mrs. Potts) are out of sight, however, you can hear McGregor’s voice as Lumiere and McKellen as Cogsworth re-create their lines when they spot Belle for the first time.
Also it looks like the set design is pulling from the French roots of the fairy tale (the original story was written by French author Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont). Beauty and the Beast is set to premiere on March 17, 2017, which probably means it’s going to be awhile until we get to see what a talking/singing credenza looks like.
