Disney continues on with their plan to adapt many of their animated classics into live-action, and we can probably expect they'll get to all of them eventually. Alice in Wonderland's $1B haul is a pretty good reason to soldier on, and so we've got Maleficent, Cinderella, The Jungle Book, and possibly another 101 Dalmatians coming up. But next on Disney's list is Beauty and the Beast, the story of a woman who falls in love with a monster. So it only makes sense they'd look to 'Breaking Dawn' director, Bill Condon, for the directing job.
A tweet by Filmdivider says to expect Condon to direct Beauty and the Beast, which Disney got moving on last year with the hiring of Joe Aherne (Trance) to begin work on the screenplay. Bear in mind this has nothing to do with the Guillermo Del Toro version that has been kicking around for awhile. That one had Emma Watson attached to it at one point, and she may still be involved if it ever gets going. Lea Seydoux and Vincent Cassel are also starring in a live-action version of the story over in France, directed by Christophe Gans. Hopefully that one will make it here to America.
As for Condon, he's been around a long time and has been generally successful despite not being the most inventive of filmmakers. He directed the final two chapters of the Twilight Saga, Dreamgirls, the Kinsey biopic with Liam Neeson, Gods and Monsters, and last year's underwhelming Wikileaks thriller The 5th Estate. He's a logical yet uninspiring choice, just as choosing Kenneth Branagh for Cinderella was.
Posts
