Emma Watson Reveals Belle Has A New Backstory in Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ Remake
Disney has recently been rebooting/remaking many of their acclaimed classic animated films, but now in live-action form. The trend started back in 2010 with Tim Burton’s wildly successful live-action remake of Alice in Wonderland. We won’t go into the specifics of that film’s mediocrity right now, but it nevertheless launched Disney into a prosperous new era. Many other films from the studio have followed in Alice’s footsteps, with some of the finest being Kenneth Branaugh’s magical Cinderella, and this year’s The Jungle Book from director Jon Favreau. And due to their extraordinary financial success, Disney has only intensified the output of fairy tale movies for the coming years, including the live-action retelling of Beauty and the Beast.
Starring Emma Watson as Belle, Luke Evans as the egotistical Gaston, and Downton Abbey icon Dan Stevens as the lovable Beast, the remake is shaping up to be one of studio’s most ambitious — and, more than likely, magnificent — films in recent memory. Throwing in the possibility that it also has the chance of being, brace yourselves, greater than the 1991 animated classic makes things all the better. But every diehard lover of the original out there should still be able to sleep well at night because Watson and her cohorts have made a slight, albeit progressive tweak to the new film.
Watson recently told Collider that her version of Belle will have a backstory different from the original. She revealed that the character will now be an inventor, as opposed to the animated film that portrayed Belle simply as a lover of books, while her father was seen as the true artist of the family.
“In the animated movie, it’s her father who is the inventor, and we actually co-opted that for Belle. I was like, ‘Well, there was never very much information or detail at the beginning of the story as to why Belle didn’t fit in, other than she liked books. Also, what is she doing with her time?’ So, we created a backstory for her, which was that she had invented a kind of washing machine, so that, instead of doing laundry, she could sit and use that time to read instead. So, yeah, we made Belle an inventor.”
It makes a lot of sense for Belle to have this newfound backstory. While her relatively low stature in the original was adequate enough for that type of film, it seems a lot wiser to have a deeper background for the live-action version. The change is also justifiable when you see how much of Watson’s post-Harry Potter years have been dedicated to promoting feminism through charity work and other public endeavors. She’s definitely proven herself to be much more than just a Hollywood starlet.
You can check out the latest images from the film just below.
Watson will be reuniting with Perks of Being a Wallflower writer/director/author Steven Chbosky, who is penning Beauty and the Beast’s script. There’s really no weak points at all in either the cast or crew, so the film’s end result basically boils down to execution. And don’t worry, we will keep you updated as more information becomes available in the coming months.
Beauty and the Beast hits U.S. theaters on March 17, 2017.