Bill Condon

Last week it seemed like the live-action Beauty and the Beast remake was about to make history with the Disney’s first openly gay character. But now director Bill Condon says the whole thing has been blown out of proportion.

To say that the first trailer for Beauty and the Beast was evocative of the 1991 animated classic would be an understatement; it was a live-action carbon copy, and if Disney’s remake of Cinderella was any indication, we were in for yet another tedious — if visually stunning, well-acted and beautifully-designed — exercise in nostalgia-based capitalism. But Bill Condon’s live-action update of Beauty and the Beast is more reimagining than remake, a lavish and lovely take on a familiar tale (as old as time, no doubt) that enriches its source material without betraying it, embellishing a cherished antique with modern ideas.

Slowly but surely, Disney is becoming a little more woke. With last year’s politically-minded (and now Oscar-winning) Zootopia, announcements of Marvel’s first female-led superhero movie and first black superhero movie, and making Ava DuVernay the first woman of color to helm a $100 million movie, the studio is adding diversity to their roster little by little. Now the studio has finally decided to feature their first openly gay character in not just any movie, but a remake of a Disney classic.

With the live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast officially one of the most anticipated movies of next year, and a trailer that looks just like the original cartoon (except with, you know, real people) we’ve all been dying to know what they sound like singing those iconic songs. I, for one, am most excited for Luke Evans to belt “Gaston” with as much gusto as the song allows for (a lot), but a ton of other classics will make their way into the picture, from the furniture and cutlery ensemble number “Be Our Guest” to the theme “Beauty and the Beast.” There’s been no official soundtrack release yet, but today we’ve gotten our first listen to Emma Watson’s Belle singing her part of the movie’s opening number.

The musical never completely died as a movie genre, but it did lay dormant for a good long while throughout the 1980s and ’90s, with only the occasional throwback like Pennies From Heaven, Newsies, or Everyone Says I Love You popping up, like an old memory. Back then, the movie business largely conceded its tradition of song-and-dance to Disney cartoons and MTV, assuming — wrongly — that the idea of flesh-and-blood actors breaking into big numbers in the middle of narrative feature films had become too cornball for the modern mass audience.

Back in May, Disney released the first teaser trailer for their live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, and although it was a rather lovely homage to the teaser for the classic animated version, it’s the only real preview we’ve had for the upcoming film. While we anxiously await the full official trailer, new concept art has debuted online that offers our first look at Lumiere and Cogsworth, along with a behind-the-scenes image of Gaston’s famous musical sequence.

“Ever just the same. Ever a surprise.” One imagines those lyrics from “Beauty and the Beast” will apply particularly well to this new version of Disney’s animated classic, coming to theaters next year.

At this point, prequels are pretty well played out. They’re frustrating to begin with, since by their very nature they tell backstories instead of stories, and after being inundated with Hollywood prequels for several years in the late 2000s and early ’10s, whatever appetite audiences had for them is long gone. So maybe the future is in postquels; movies set long after the adventures of heroes we know. If so, Mr. Holmes could be the start of a whole new trend.

Disney has had a lot of success turning their animated classics into live-action updates in recent years. ‘Maleficent’ grossed more than $750 million worldwide after ‘Alice in the Wonderland’ made over $1 billion. Another, fleshier ‘Cinderella’ is on its way this spring, and after that you can also expect a human-y ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ That film is expected to go into production later this year, and will be directed by ‘Twilight’’s Bill Condon from a script by Stephen Chbosky.

Along with their live-action versions of 'The Jungle Book' and 'Cinderella,' Disney is also cooking up a similar live-action updating of their classic take on 'Beauty and the Beast.' Set to be directed by Bill Condon, the new film now has a writer: 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower' scribe Stephen Chbosky.