New Live Action Beauty and the Beast new!

At the end of last year I heard on the grapevine through the ethers of movie news that there would be yet another adaption of "Beauty and The Beast" and as you can imagine as with everybody who has ever seen Disney's version of this classic tale... as old as time, -I'm sorry I just couldn't resist doing this pun-, that my heart sank as the last time this was adapted to give a modern take on this was "Beastly" and that bombed really badly.

And I think the reason for this was because this is a classic story and Disney did and in my opinion there are some classics that you don't touch, like for example in music for instance "Smells Like Teen Spirit" classic people try to sing it differently but fail, any Adele song again people try and badly fail, Chris Isaac's "Wicked Game" tried and failed, I can only think at the moment of the one film other than "Beastly" that I don't think did very well but I think it was only saved by the music in it "A Cinderella Story",-this starred Hilary Duff and Chad Michael Murray and had Jimmy Eat World with "Hear You Me", I'll put it here for you to have a little listen to if you haven't heard it-, oh and "Maleficent" that starred Angelina Jolie I think that did well at the box office but I'm not sure if the retelling of Sleeping Beauty but from the angle of the wicked witch that put the spell on the beauty and how she became so evil was a winner for the audience.

 

Anyhew... this live action film will be starring Emma Watson as Belle and there seems to have been a change around in the casting department as I read on The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision's website that Dan Stevens who you may or may not recognise from either Downton Abbey as Matthew Crawley or "The Guest" as "David" the psychopath killer that enters a family on the pretence that he served in the military with their dead son but it's only revealed when the sister has suspicions about him and makes a phone call to double check his story that they really find out he's part of a project where "David" killed all the other participants including their brother in a fire and assumed the identity of "David" in order to get out of the project, was set to play Gaston the big, strong, hunter in the Disney version who every women wants to be with character who wants Belle but she doesn't want him, but now according to Heat Vision he will now play The Beast/Prince in this new live action film.

 

And now according to The Wrap Emma Thompson has now been cast as Mrs. Potts the enchanted singing and talking teapot and Kevin Kline will star as Belle's inventor father Maurice who gets imprisoned in the beast's castle when he gets caught in a snowstorm.

 

Luke Evans who you may or may not recognise from "The Hobbit" he played Bard the smuggler who helped the Dwarves get away from the wood elves and hid them in barrels of fish on his boat as he was trading, or from "Fast and Furious 5" he played Owen Shaw has been cast to play Gaston with Josh Gad who you may or may not recognise did the voice of Olaf in Frozen has signed on to play Le Fou the bumbling sidekick of Gaston.

 

Bill Condon is directing with David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman producing, and Oscar winning Alan Menken who  wrote the original musical aspects of the film will be back to craft the score as well as re-record some of the songs along with new material from himself and Tim Rice.

 

Bill Condon is working from a script written by Stephen Cbosky and filming for this will start in May at Shepperton Studios with a pencilled in USA release date of March 17th 2017 in 3D.