Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Check out the first teaser for Disney’s next live-action remake

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.

Recommended Videos

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.

Adam Poltrack
Former Contributor
Adam is an A/V News Writer for Digital Trends, and is responsible for bringing you the latest advances in A/V…
Like Transformers: Rise of the Beasts? Then check out these awesome action movies
Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum stare from Independence Day.

This past weekend so the return of the Transformers franchise in theaters for the first time since 2018. Directed by Creed II's Steven Caple Jr., Transformers: Rise of the Beasts travels back to 1994 in a globetrotting adventure serving as the standalone sequel to Bumblebee and a prequel to 2007's Transformers.

Anthony Ramos is Noah, a former soldier trying to support his family in Brooklyn, New York. Noah steals a Porsche 911 to sell, but the car turns into an Autobot named Mirage (Pete Davidson). Noah, with the help of museum worker Elena Wallace (Dominique Fishback), is recruited by Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) to help the Autobots find the Transwarp Key and return home. However, the evil Terrorcons are also in search of the key. The Autobots join forces with another Transformers faction, the Maximals, to stop a planet-sized Terrorcons known as the Unicron (Colman Domingo) from destroying Earth.

Read more
Is the 2023 live-action The Little Mermaid remake streaming?
Halle Bailey as Ariel in a poster for The Little Mermaid.

In 1989, The Little Mermaid marked the beginning of the Disney Renaissance, which revitalized the company's animation division and eventually led to Disney's emergence as the biggest studio in Hollywood. During the intervening decades, Disney has made a habit out of remaking its animated classics in live-action. Some are more successful than others, but The Little Mermaid has a special place in our hearts thanks to the timeless music and songs of Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman.

For the remake, Hamilton star and creator Lin-Manuel Miranda joined Menken for some new songs and a few revamped numbers. Additionally, singer and actress Halle Bailey stepped into the title role of Ariel, who was voiced by Jodi Benson in the original film. Rounding out the cast of the remake are Jonah Hauer-King, Daveed Diggs, Renfield's Awkwafina, Jacob Tremblay, Noma Dumezweni, Art Malik, Javier Bardem, and Melissa McCarthy.

Read more
The best live-action Disney remakes, ranked
Young Simba and Mufasa in the Pride Lands | Lion King VFX

Disney is the king of recycling its own property, with remakes of everything from Beauty and the Beast to Lady and the Tramp. Disney live-action remakes have almost become a genre unto themselves, with each one of them varying in their respective effectiveness.

The newest Disney remake, The Little Mermaid, just hit theaters on Friday, bringing yet another installment to Disney's growing library of remakes. Director Rob Marshall's The Little Mermaid will make it the third live-action remake in the past two years, joining the ranks of Robert Zemeckis' poorly-reviewed Pinocchio and David Lowery's straight-to-streaming Peter Pan & Wendy. Whether you like it or not, Disney remakes are here to stay. Even Moana, which hit theaters in 2016, is already getting a live-action remake with star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson returning.

Read more