Emma Thompson & Kevin Kline Join BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, Which Sets 2017 Release Date

Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast is shaping up to have one of the best casts of all of the live-action reimaginings of fairy tale classics. We already know that Emma Watson will play Belle, Dan Stevens (The Guest) is playing The Beast/The Prince, Luke Evans is playing Gaston, and Josh Gad is playing Gaston's idiotic sidekick Le Fou. But the studio has just sent out a press release that confirms two more actors have been added to the cast, and the movie now has a release date penciled onto the calendar.

Emma Thompson (Saving Mr. Banks) will play Mrs. Potts, while Kevin Kline (Wild Wild West) will play Belle's father, Maurice. Thompson is brilliant casting, and I think Kline will do a fine job as Belle's bumbling inventor father. The film will arrive in theaters on March 17th, 2017, which just over two years from now. That's a little farther away than I thought, but the announcement says that the "beloved tale will be retold for the big screen with a modern live-action lens and the help of transformative CG magic," so I suppose it'll take them a while to perfect the CG.

Also of note (pun intended): Alan Menken, who won two Oscars for his work on the 1991 animated version of the story, will score the movie, "which will feature new recordings of the original songs in addition to several new songs written by Menken and Sir Tim Rice." That's very cool news for Disney musical enthusiasts, since Menken and Rice are jointly responsible for classics like Aladdin and The Lion King.

Are you looking forward to seeing this new incarnation of Beauty and the Beast? I really hope Kevin Kline uses this video as inspiration for his character: