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Bill Condon to Direct Live-Action Beauty and the Beast

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Twilight helmer Bill Condon has signed on to direct Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast film.

The news comes on the heels of Disney's latest live-action success, Maleficent, which hit theaters May 28. The film, starring Angelina Jolie, topped the box office its opening weekend, earning north of $170 million worldwide.

Disney also released the live-action Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland films to much success, and currently has a live-action Cinderella film coming up in 2015 as well as a Jungle Book film in development.

The animated Beauty and the Beast film opened in theaters in 1991, and went on to earn $425 million worldwide.

Condon, whose name had been circling the Beauty and the Beast project for several months, directed Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2, and most recently helmed The Fifth Estate.

Condon's musical chops were proven with the 2006 hit Dreamgirls, based on the Broadway musical. He's repped by WME, Anonymous Content and Alexander, Lawrence.

and from Hit Fix

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UPDATE: A couple of new details here. You might be wondering, since the original report doesn't mention any story details, how exactly this thing is going to play out. Sources tell HitFix that Condon won't only be drawing from the 1991 Disney film. In his pitch to the studio, the director said he would also include most, if not all, of the Menken/Rice songs from the Broadway musical that ran for 13 years from 1994 to 2007. It will be a "straight-forward, live action, large-budget movie musical," we're told.

See below for the earlier story.

EARLIER: With "Maleficent" hitting big (though, contextually, not as big as the breathless media seems to think), and an "Alice in Wonderland" sequel on the way, it's clear Disney is interested in testing the stamina of the company's intellectual properties in the live action space. Add one more to the schedule: "Beauty and the Beast."

Variety reports that Oscar-winning filmmaker Bill Condon ("Gods and Monsters," "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn") will translate the tale of Belle and Gaston from the world of animation with Evan Spiliotopoulos writing the script. But that's all we have for now.

The oldest known variant of the "Beauty and the Beast" fairytale was written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740, though 16 years later a contemporary, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, published her own version and that's the most well-known rendition. There have been a number of filmed versions, from Jean Cocteau's 1946 "La Belle et la Bête" in 1946 to the 1987 TV "Beauty and the Beast" TV series starring Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman to the 2011 modern-day take "Beastly." The Michael Bay-directed music video for Meat Loaf's 1993 single "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" also borrowed from the story's iconography liberally.

But Disney's 1991 opus is the most successful film version we've seen. It was the first animated feature to be nominated for Best Picture, and is indeed the only one to have been nominated in the five-nominee paradigm. The story and writing team featured an eventual who's who of the animation world, from directors Roger Allers ("The Lion King"), Brenda Chapman ("Brave," "The Prince of Egypt") and Chris Sanders ("Lilo & Stitch," "How to Train Your Dragon," "The Croods") to luminaries like Joe Ranft. It's an enduring masterwork, and really, it's kind of surprising it took this long for Disney to trot out a live action version.

And I'm cautiously optimistic about it, I must say. It seems like something Condon could really sink his teeth into and be creative with. He's been trying to find his post-"Twilight" legs. "The Fifth Estate" didn't hit the mark, but his Sherlock Holmes tale "A Slight Trick of the Mind" looks intriguing. He's a classy, creative guy and if he can just find the right project, I think he'll really sing again. We'll see in due time if "Beauty in the Beast" is what the doctor ordered.

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Originally Posted by SzczerbiakManiac (Post 371590)

Bill Condon to Direct Live-Action Beauty and the Beast

So I guess this is going to be a thing now. Taking a quick look at the Disney body of work:

Cinderella, Pan, Alice, 101 Dalmations, and Jungle book have already been done.

I guess "Sleeping beauty" would have to count as already done as well.

Little Mermaid is already in the works I hear

So, I guess this is already a thing and has been for quite some time.

Aladdin would seem to be the next logical choice.
Then Pocahontas and Mulan.

Personally I'd like to see a live action "Incredibles"

Live action "The Wizard of Oz?" As opposed to . . .

The Muppets Wizard of Oz?

There was an animated version in the '70s (Journey Back to Oz0 but Disney wasn't involved in that.