Walt Disney Pictures’ upcoming live-action take on Beauty and the Beast has today announced its Gaston! Variety reports that Luke Evans will play the testosterone-driven braggart opposite Emma Watson’s Belle. Seeing as no one shoots like Gaston, the addition of Evans is quite appropriate. He very recently took care of Laketown’s dragon problem in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, so the Beast himself may be in for a challenge.
Set to be directed by Bill Condon (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn) and produced by Mandeville Films’ David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman, Beauty and the Beast marks the latest in a string of live-action retellings of classic Disney animated classics. In addition to the recently-released Alice in Wonderland and Maleficent, the studio will release their Kenneth Branagh-helmed take on Cinderella later this month and has a Jon Favreau-helmed version of The Jungle Book on the way April 15, 2016.
Watson herself had been previously attached to another version of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s fairy tale at Warner Bros. That project stalled after director Guillermo del Toro dropped out last summer. Apparently Del Toro gave Watson his blessing to move on to Disney’s version, no doubt sweetened by the fact that the script was written by Stephen Chbosky, who directed Watson in The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
(Photo Credit: WENN.com)
