You probably saw the television series starring The Terminator’s Linda Hamilton and pre-Hellboy Ron Perlman. You’ve also probably seen the Academy Award nominee for Best Picture, Disney’s animated Beauty and the Beast–arguably the finest Disney film in its animation vault. Coming next year to the big screen is a new, live-action version of Beauty and the Beast, starring the Harry Potter series’ Emma Watson as Belle. Academy Award winning screenplay writer Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters, Chicago, the Twilight series) is directing the picture.
Despite press accounts to the contrary, don’t look for an adaptation of the classic fairy tale, but an adaptation of the animated Disney film as the original did not have the talking furniture or most of the other characters created for the 1991 film. The first teaser trailer dropped this week for the 2017 release, and viewership surpassed Star Wars: The Force Awakens with more than 91 million views in its first day of release. You haven’t watched it yet? We have queued up this very pretty teaser for you below, after the break.
Dan Stevens (Night at the Museum 2, Sense and Sensibility) co-stars as The Beast, and the rest of the cast is full of familiar genre favorites. The Hobbit’s Luke Evans is the swaggering Gaston, Kevin Kline (Dave, Silverado) is Belle’s father Maurice, the Star Wars prequels’ Ewan McGregor is Lumiere, the candelabrum (originally voiced by the late Jerry Orbach), Stanley Tucci is the harpsichord, Audra McDonald (Kidnapped) is the wardrobe, and anglophiles will be happy to see The Hobbit and X-Men’s Ian McKellen as Cogsworth the clock and Emma Thompson (Much Ado About Nothing) as Mrs. Potts, the teapot.
Check out this popular first trailer for Beauty and the Beast:
We haven’t quite seen a teaser like that since the trailer for Phantom of the Opera back in 2004.
Beauty and the Beast is scheduled for release March 17, 2017.
C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com
