When it comes to both tales as old as time and songs as old as rhyme, you can bet that they’re going to be made and remade for generations. As we’ve seen with the recent Cinderella and Jungle Book retellings, Disney has been on a bit of a live-action kick lately — and we just got our first peek at the next cartoon classic to be acted out by real live humans.
On today’s episode of Good Morning America, Disney debuted the first teaser trailer for Beauty and the Beast and — if you count yourself among the studio’s scores of overgrown fans — be prepared to have the feels. The teaser (embedded above) opens with a frozen-over version of the iconic Disney castle as the spooky-yet-alluring music from the prologue of the original begins to play in the background. It has been nearly a quarter century since the original hit theaters, but it’s clear that the Alan Menken-composed theme hasn’t lost any of its mysterious power.
From there, we get a tour of the beautifully CGI-ified castle, a quick off-screen back-and-forth between Lumiere (Ewan McGregor) and Cogsworth (Ian McKellen), and a shot of the famous Enchanted Rose. The trailer then invites fans to join in on the fun with the iconic phrase: “Be Our Guest.”
As is the case with most teasers, this one is a bit of … a tease. It doesn’t give us much meat to chew on, but the trailer does seem to capture the feel of the original and should certainly be enough to pique the interest of long-time fans.
While this project boasts an all-star cast and a top-notch production team, living up to the enormously high standard set by the original will be tall task. After all, it was one of only three animated films in history to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. And the other two — Up and Toy Story 3 — were nominated after the Academy expanded the best-picture field from five films to ten.
Beauty and the Beast stars Emma Watson as Belle, Luke Evans (The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug) as Gaston, and Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) as the titular Beast. It hits theaters March 17, 2017.
