Spring is just right around the corner, so you know what that means: time for a new remake of a Disney classic. After Cinderella in March of 2015 and Jungle Book last April (not to mention Alice in Wonderland in March of 2010, which started this whole ugly business), this year’s entry in the make-that-paper sweepstakes is Bill Condon’s remake of Beauty and the Beast. They’ve already wrung a considerable amount of long dollars out of the 25-year-old musical; there were three theatrical re-releases of the original (IMAX in 2002, sing-along in 2010, and 3D 2012), plus the long-running Broadway musical.
And now we have the new “live-action” version (a bit of a misnomer, as so much of it is still computer-generated animation), co-written and directed by Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Gods and Monsters) and starring Emma Watson as Belle, Dan Stevens as the Beast, Luke Evans as Gaston, Kevin Kline as Maurice, and the voice talents of Emma Thompson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Stanley Tucci, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Audra McDonald, and Josh Gad. Here’s your full trailer:
To be fair, it looks pretty good! I mean, Beauty and the Beast is still a fundamentally troubling story of male domination and abuser normalization that’s somehow offset by the fact that it features a Disney princess who (gasp) reads books, but those are some very good songs, and the casting is aces, so who knows, maybe it’ll be good. It will certainly make a metric ton of money.
Beauty and the Beast is out March 17.