Beauty and The Beast

The eight-episode show will focus on Gaston and LeFou.

We haven’t seen a year like this since 1958.

Wonder Woman and IT made a huge impression at the box office this year, but both failed to overtake 2017’s biggest hit: Beauty and the Beast. Released back in March, Disney’s blockbuster reimagining of its animated classic is still the highest-grossing film of the year, and as we wade into the prestigious waters of awards season, the studio is making sure that voters don’t forget about it.

Once upon a time, a man with a dream turned a small animation studio into a global empire. Much of that success was built on a series of wildly popular feature films, many of which shared a common figure: A beautiful, heroic princess. The man was Walt Disney and even after he passed away in 1966, his company continued to dedicate much of its creative energy on films (and television shows and untold tons of merchandise) dedicated to princesses. The latest, a live-action version of the studio’s Oscar-nominated cartoon Beauty and the Beast, opens in theaters on Friday. In its honor, the staff of ScreenCrush (and Mousterpiece Cinema co-host Josh Spiegel) decided to rank every single Disney princess in history.

This year’s Beauty and the Beast promises that we will see every iconic shot and dance number from the original, but now in glorious live-action. Actors whose faces we recognize will bring timeless characters to life, and sing all of the songs we loved as kids. There are a few great songs in the original movie: “Tale as Old as Time” is a classic, and “Belle” has plenty of fake French accents to try to copy, but the best scene, and the scene yours truly is anticipating the most, is “Gaston.”

Finally, the moment we’ve all been waiting for ever since Disney announced this live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast: The Gaston song. Listen, this “tale as old as time” is sweet and magical and all that other wonderful stuff, but it’s okay to admit that you’re 100 percent here for Luke Evans as the nefarious, narcissistic master of swagger, performing what is, with apologies to Angela Lansbury, the actual greatest song from Beauty and the Beast (don’t @ me).

Despite volumes of scholarship from feminist theorists on its undertones of spousal abuse and insidious romanticizing of male brutality, Disney‘s Beauty and the Beast has remained a cherished childhood favorite worldwide. Kids love talking furniture, go figure. The live-action remake starring Emma Watson and an unrecognizable Dan Stevens is hot on the way to its March 17 release, and Disney has now released two new TV spots to further amp up the anticipation. In the first, embedded above, the Beast implores lovely Belle to “think of the one thing you’ve always wanted, and feel it in your heart.” We get a glimpse of the timeless ballroom-waltz scene, some barroom carousing from Gaston, and yet another look at the deeply unsettling character designs for Lumiere and Cogsworth.

When it comes to online movie polls, which ones do you think the public is usually most excited for: little indie pictures or huge superhero/sci-fi/fantasy blockbusters? Spoiler alert— it’s the blockbusters. Shocking, I know. In Fandango’s year-end poll of the most anticipated movies of 2017, Star Wars: Episode VIII, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and the live-action Beauty and the Beast took the top spots.

With the live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast officially one of the most anticipated movies of next year, and a trailer that looks just like the original cartoon (except with, you know, real people) we’ve all been dying to know what they sound like singing those iconic songs. I, for one, am most excited for Luke Evans to belt “Gaston” with as much gusto as the song allows for (a lot), but a ton of other classics will make their way into the picture, from the furniture and cutlery ensemble number “Be Our Guest” to the theme “Beauty and the Beast.” There’s been no official soundtrack release yet, but today we’ve gotten our first listen to Emma Watson’s Belle singing her part of the movie’s opening number.

Everyone knows how Beauty and the Beast starts off — a haughty prince refuses to give shelter to an old lady who turns out to be a fairy, who then curses him and his whole castle, turning him into a monster and his staff into inanimate objects. Well, the inanimate objects are still pretty animate, able to talk and dance and sing at poor Belle, who should be checking her food for hallucinogens rather than singing along, but who cares, this is a Disney movie. For those of you dying to see the rest of the castle’s inhabitants in their more flesh-and-blood forms, they’re human again in a new poster standee for the movie.

When the news that Disney was making a live-action Beauty and the Beast movie dropped, we all wondered one thing: how close was this version sticking to the original? Would the costumes look the same? Would the inanimate object characters be changed at all? Would there still be songs? From what we’ve seen, it looks like everything in this version, will look the same, just more realistic. Emma Watson’s Belle still has her blue-and-white outfit, the Beast looks similar, if not a little more uncanny-valley, and Lumiere and Cogsworth look more or less like themselves, just with a few tweaks.

While logging into Facebook, I came across the hilarious video of 'If Belle from Beauty and The Beast were from the ghetto.'  This video is full of funny moments and will have you watching it twice.