Beauty and the Beast Trailer Premiere: Get Your First Look at Emma Watson as Belle in Disney's Live-Action Musical

Bill Condon is directing the musical, set for release 26 years after the animated classic enchanted audiences

By Zach Johnson May 23, 2016 12:33 PMTags

It's a tale as old as time, but Beauty and the Beast is a story that deserves to be retold. And so, Walt Disney Studios is releasing a live-adaptation of its Oscar-winning animated classic on March 17, 2017. A teaser trailer premiered Monday on ABC's Good Morning America, nine months after the first footage was previewed during the annual D23 Expo in Anaheim, Calif.

Directed by Bill Condon, the movie stars Emma Watson as Belle, Dan Stevens as the Beast, Luke Evans as Gaston, Kevin Kline as Maurice, Josh Gad as LeFou, Adrian Schiller as Monsieur D'Arque, Hattie Morahan as Agathe the Enchantress, Henry Garrett as the King and Harriet Jones as the Queen. The film boasts an impressive voice cast, too, with Emma Thompson as Mrs. Potts, Ewan McGregor as Lumière, Ian McKellen as Cogsworth, Stanley Tucci as Cadenza, Audra McDonald as Wardrobe, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Babette and Nathan Mack as Chip Potts.

Wanna see Watson in the yellow dress? Better luck next time.

To the delight of fans around the world, Condon's version of Beauty and the Beast will feature many of the beloved songs Alan Menken wrote for the 1991 animated hit (and later the Broadway musical).

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"Between Dreamgirls and the screenplay for Chicago, I think I've been fortunate to be around during an interesting moment in the resurgence of the movie musical. I don't think there are any hard and fast rules to the form, except that hopefully, the songs are good, and they move the story forward," Condon told Vanity Fair last year. "When I first spoke to Disney about doing Beauty and the Beast, they actually weren't sure they were going to do this new version as a musical, and I said, 'With all due respect, I think you're crazy. The songs are too good. You're going to spend all this time making a huge, gorgeous live-action Beauty and the Beast and not do 'Be Our Guest?'"

The final result was nothing short of magic.

As Gad gushed to Jenny McCarthy last Wednesday on SiriusXM's Dirty, Sexy, Funny radio show, "The movie's incredible. Anybody who ever loved Beauty and the Beast—which clearly you didn't as a child—is gonna love it. It builds on the legacy of the original and takes it to the next level. I'm excited."

 

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