Bill Condon to Direct Live Action Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast

Maleficent made all the money this past weekend so it’s time to start mining the Disney vault for more money.

Cinderella is already in [the pipe for next year](https://awesomefriday.ca/2014/05/cinderella-teaser-poster/) with Kenneth Branagh at the helm and Jon Favreau is developing The Jungle Book, but it seems pretty natural that Beauty and the Beast would be next. It kicked off the Golden Age of Disney (aka that massive run of box office smashes in the 1990s) and it is one of their best animated movies.

Plus, Bill Condon is a good director. Whether it goes full musical (he wrote the film version of Chicago) or full superhero (he directed Twilight: Breaking Dawn, which has one of the best superhero fights ever put to screen) I think he’ll be a good choice.

I would really like to see an amazing superhero fight in this though. Beast vs. Gaston. It could really be the bulk of the third act, right?

No word on a date, stars, producers, writers, yet but we’ll keep you updated.

(source: [Variety](http://variety.com/2014/film/news/bill-condon-beauty-and-the-beast-disney-1201151834/))