Disney’s ‘Beauty’ as a live movie

By LINDSEY BAHR

AP Film Writer

LOS ANGELES

Director Bill Condon was only interested in turning Disney’s animated classic “Beauty and the Beast “ into a live-action film if he could use Alan Menken’s Oscar-winning score. He remembers fondly when it came out in 1991 and how it not only solidified Disney’s animation renaissance after “The Little Mermaid,” but also helped revitalize the movie musical at a time when the genre was basically dead.

The New York Times theater critic Frank Rich even called it, somewhat controversially, “the best Broadway musical score of 1991.”

It’s fitting, then, that the twinkling instrumentals of Menken’s prologue are the first thing you hear in the new trailer for the film, released Monday by Disney.

Set for a March 1, 2017, release, the film stars Emma Watson as Belle, Dan Stevens as the Beast and a robust supporting cast including Luke Evans, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Emma Thompson and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. The film will feature re-recordings of Menken and Howard Ashman’s songs, as well as a few new ones.

“We talk about how technology is a reason for doing it 25 years later, but the fact is, too, that the genre itself has revived and people are more accepting. There’s a wider audience for just the joy of breaking out into song,” said Condon, who also wrote and directed “Dreamgirls.” “It feels like the audience has caught up again.”

Indeed, interest in the project is extraordinarily high. In its first 24 hours online, the trailer garnered 127.6 million views – besting the first day trailer stats for both “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and “Fifty Shades Darker” by over 13 million views.

Anyone who has seen the animated film is sure to be struck by some familiar imagery in the trailer, recreated and made real in magnificent detail.

The new movie also contains nods to Jean Cocteau’s ornate black and white version from 1946, Condon said, as well as his own unique vision.

The film is not just a remembrance of “Beauty and the Beasts” past, however. They’ve made Belle even more modern than she was in 1991, when it was somewhat extraordinary to have the center of a Disney film be more interested in books than boys. In this version, she’s an inventor too, and being portrayed by an actress who is a humanitarian and a UN women’s ambassador.