For those keeping score on the UK/US lead casting for Disney’s new live-action Beauty And The Beast, prepare to adjust your figures: the studio has added Emma Thompson and Kevin Kline to the ensemble.
That raises the number of Brits in the cast to four and the American count to two. Emma Watson is aboard to play Belle, one of the titular duo, a young woman who agrees to take her father’s place in the home of a cursed prince that has been turned into a beastly creature (Dan Stevens). She’s also courted by the arrogant Gaston (Luke Evans), who, when she rejects his advances in favour of the charming Beast, sets off on a course of revenge.
Josh Gad signed on most recently as Gaston’s bumbling sidekick Le Fou and now Kline is set to play Belle’s father Maurice, with Thompson inheriting the role of Mrs. Potts, the enchanted talking (and singing) teapot who lives in the Beast’s castle. And from the sounds of it, director Bill Condon is maintaining the musical aspects from the 1991 animated version, with Oscar-wining composer Alan Menken back to craft the score and re-recording the songs from that film along with new material from Menken and Sir Tim Rice.
Condon is working from a script by The Perks Of Being A Wallflower’s Stephen Chbosky and he’ll kick off shooting this coming May at Shepperton Studios, aiming for a freshly set US release date of March 17, 2017.