No one says no to Gaston.
Luke Evans, who played the slick villain in 2017's Beauty and the Beast, has an update on his Disney+ spin-off series with LeFou (Josh Gad)—and be sure to give five hurrahs and twelve hip-hips, because it's still happening.
"It's been put on hold," he told Entertainment Weekly in an interview published Sept. 8. "We just wanna make sure that it is absolutely the best it can be, and if that means we just have to wait a little longer to finesse certain pieces of it, then that's what we're going to do because this is a very important legacy."
Evans said the creators want to "honor" the characters with "the best story we can possibly deliver," but it "is gonna happen" at "some point in the near future."
He added that the spin-off will focus on how Gaston and LeFou met and became the duo that we see in Beauty and the Beast, a concept that "opened up several cans of worms."
"To navigate a story of those two people and also new characters, and then bring them right up to the moment where you meet them in the movie has been a thrilling experience," he said. "There's a lot of ways it could go. So that's where we have been so far and where we hopefully will go to in the future."
The film made headlines in 2017 for touting an "exclusively gay moment," for Gad's LeFou, though many critics—Gad included—believe the scene (in which LeFou danced with another man just before the credits) didn't go far enough. Evans said he's "not sure" if LeFou's sexuality will be explored.
"There's so many things about these two characters that we don't really know about their origin stories," he explained. "Were they always these creatures or were they different? It's a bit like, no one's born bad. Things happen, you make wrong decisions, or you choose to make a decision that affects the rest of your life. I think that was where we were going with the idea and concept. So I hope one day soon we will be able to deliver that story for you guys."
Beauty and the Beast is now streaming on Disney+.