| Francesca Bacardi 22. April 2015 – 06:37
Beauty and the Beast is getting a newcomer to its cast of characters!
Stanley Tucci has signed on to join Disney’s live-action film as a brand-new character. The Devil Wears Prada actor will play Cadenza the grand piano, who is described as a neurotic maestro, Variety reports. Casting announcements first began surfacing in January when it was announced that Emma Watson would be take on the lead role of Belle.
Josh Gad, Dan Stevens, Kevin Kline and Luke Evans also have signed on to appear in Disney’s latest live-action flick. Talk about some serious star power!
Tucci’s announcement was made Tuesday, which is why he didn’t appear in the first photo of the cast together! Gad had uploaded the pic to Instagram last week, captioning it, “Can’t wait for you to be our guest!”
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Unfortunately, we have to wait until March 17, 2017—yes, that long—until we see all of these faces on the big screen. In addition to these celebs, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson and Ewan McGregor will also appear in Beauty and the Beast, officially making it one of the most A-list castings we’ve seen in a long time!
Alan Menken, who won two Academy Awards in 1991 for the animated classic version, will be scoring the reboot. According to the press release, the live-action movie will feature “new recordings of the original songs” in addition to new music written by Menken and Sir Tim Rice.
Production was initially set to begin in the coming weeks at the Shepperton Studios in London, but Gad’s photo makes us think they got together a little bit early! Maybe now fans will receive another picture from Gad that includes Tucci. With a cast filled with such friendly looking faces, Watson shouldn’t be as nervous anymore to take on Belle, which she once described as an “unexpected” experience.
“I sing, so that’s really unexpected,” the actress, 24, told Total Film. “I’ve never had to do that for a film before, and I think people will be interested to see me do something very different like that.”
She added, “It gives me a different challenge, really. That’s terrifying in and of itself!”
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