It seems like you’re a nobody at the moment unless you’ve signed up for a Disney movie, so who can blame Ewan McGregor for grabbing the opportunity to join the cast of Beauty and the Beast with both hands? The ever-popular Scot will play Lumiere, a maitre d’ who has been turned into a candlestick following a curse put on the Beast’s castle.
Yes siree, the Disney stable is going to be a veritable hive of activity over the next couple of years. As already reported here at Roobla, The Jungle Book, Dumbo, Pinocchio and Mulan are all on the horizon and will all be given the live-action treatment.
Beauty and the Beast, however, could prove to be the most star-studded of the lot. McGregor is just the latest addition to a stellar line-up that includes Emma Watson, Dan Stevens (no prizes for guessing who they’ll be playing), Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson and Luke Evans. Oh, and Stanley Tucci also decided to tag along – could it get any more illustrious?
To be fair, Disney will probably need all the big guns it can get to live up to previous successes inspired by this fairytale. A theatrical version of Beauty and the Beast ran on Broadway for no less than 13 years, whilst Disney’s own 1991 release went down as one of the few animated films to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. But McGregor could be the final piece in the jigsaw and should have no problems in bringing Lumiere to life, especially when it’s time to belt out Be Our Guest – unless someone else was doing all that singing in Moulin Rouge.
The cameras will start to roll next month, with a stateside release slated for March 17, 2017.
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