It has been 25 years since Walt Disney Pictures brought the French fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast to life as an animated musical. The pop-culture classic went on to become the third most successful film of 1991 in the U.S. and was nominated for four Academy Awards (including Best Picture), later inspiring a Broadway musical, two sequels and a TV series. For decades now, Beauty and the Beast has enchanted audiences around the world, and soon the film will be one of Disney's new live-action remakes, alongside already released Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, The Jungle Book and others planned for the future.
Next year's live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast stars Emma Watson and Dan Stevens as the two lead characters in a story written by Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) and directed by Bill Condon (Dreamgirls). The adaptation will feature many of the songs from the original, as well as three new ones created by the same composer, Alan Menken. In almost every single way, it looks like the upcoming film will be a picture perfect retelling of the 1990s classic.
A new extended TV trailer above gives us another peek at the Beast and his castle's famous inhabitants like Lumière (Ewan McGregor), Cogsworth (Ian McKellen) and Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson). They appear just as fans probably imagined they would when picturing those animated characters from long ago as household objects who can walk and talk. All the major scenes from the animated classic are presented in the teaser: Belle meeting the castle's enchanted staff, discovering the magic rose, fighting wolves and getting to know the Beast. Gaston (Luke Evans) also makes his feud with the Beast quite known as he gathers for the hunt.
It is quite an undertaking for Disney to take such a well-known, world-renowned classic like Beauty and the Beast from the studio's 1990s renaissance period and still make it different enough for a remake. Other recent live-action Disney remakes are adaptations of movies quite a bit older from the 1950s and 1960s, but Beauty and the Beast is still new enough that fans will remember it vividly. When the film was first announced, a lot of people speculated as to which characters would show up, how many of the original songs would make an appearance, and how much of the movie would change.
So far, judging by the various trailers, everything looks pretty much the same. Of course, we'll have to wait until the movie releases early next year to know for sure. The good news is that buzz for Beauty and the Beast is currently at a high with the first full trailer setting an all-time record for views in its first 24 hours online. Their story is a tale as old as time, retold in various ways since it was first published in 1740, and it seems audiences everywhere still haven't had enough.
Source: Walt Disney
