Beauty and the Beast to get live-action treatment from Disney
Move over, Angelina Jolie - another live action remake of a Disney animated classic has been confirmed.
With Jolie's Maleficent - a re-telling of Disney's Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of the story's main antagonist - making waves at the box office, Disney has announced that Beauty and the Beast will join The Jungle Book and Cinderella in its next wave of live action remakes.
According to Variety, Bill Condon of Dreamgirls and Twilight fame will direct, while script-writing duties have been handed to Evan Spiliotopoulos.
No mention has been made about casting as the project is still in its early days.
The original Beauty and the Beast animated film, which was adapted from a French fairytale by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, was released in 1991 and went on to gross nearly US$475 million ($594m) worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo.
With Dame Angela Lansbury among the cast as the voice of Mrs Potts, the beloved show became the first animated film to be nominated for Best Picture, losing out to Silence of the Lambs. It received six nominations and won two awards at the 1992 Oscars.
Sources: Variety, Box Office Mojo
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