Although Disney hasn’t officially announced that its live-action Beauty & The Beast will even be a musical, it’s starting to sound like it’ll almost be a shot for shot remake of the 1991 animated movie (not really), but with more CGI than just a ballroom.
The cast is fast coming together, with Emma Watson (Belle) joined by Dan Stevens (the Beast), Luke Evans (Gaston) and Josh Gad (Lefou) in the last few days, and now two more have signed up with TheWrap reporting that Emma Thompson and Kevin Kline have come onboard.
Kline is set to be Belle’s ditzy father Maurice, whose capture by the Beast sets the whole plot in motion. Thompson meanwhile is going to be a teapot, taking over from Angela Lansbury as the piece of singing crockery, Mrs. Potts.
Having Potts in the movie is perhaps the ultimate proof this will stick close to the earlier movie, but there’s one more very strong piece of evidence, which is that original composer Alan Menken has been brought in to retool his score for the movie, with Sir Tim Rice helping to provide some new words (original lyricist Howard Ashman sadly died shortly before the 1991 movie premiered).
We also now have a release date for the Bill Condon directed movie, March 17th 2017, so will still have a while to wait.
You do realize that there was a Broadway musical after the film and that Alan Menken and Tim Rice had a hand in that as well.