The moment has finally arrived. Fans everywhere have been wondering endlessly what the new live-action Beauty And The Beast would really look like and Nov. 2 a few images of the cast of characters were released, but they were pretty static. Not, the official Beauty And The Beast trailer for the new live-action version has been released, and it's answering so many questions.
We see The Beast (played by Dan Stevens), as well as a host of supporting characters including Ewan McGregor's Lumiere, Emma Thompson's Mrs. Potts, and Ian McKellen's Cogsworth all in action. As expected, the animated versions of the characters speak so much to the people who play them. And in an interview with Bustle, director Bill Condon explains why.
"We did the voice but we also shot the characters as they did it. I didn't want to do — we could have done a regular Ewan McGregor face inside of Lumiere but that didn't seem right. It seemed a little creepy actually," he tells me via phone, the Friday before the trailer release.
Condon also spoke a bit about how the animators made sure to capture Steven's swoon-worthy, romantic-lead facial expressions despite the actor being seen onscreen as a Beast. And a lot of work went into making the Beast a reality.
"We did use this process that's pretty uncommon, where he didn't have those dots across his face as we were shooting or anything impeding him while we were shooting," says Condon. "It was just Dan's face that Emma and everyone got to play with. And then at night, he would go and recreate that performance in this big machine, where his face was sprayed so that absolutely every pore of his skin was captured."
And that work comes through in the quick clips we get to see of The Beast in the new trailer. And good thing they worked this hard to bring Stevens' actions through — you don't hire Matthew Crawley and then keep his face out of the picture. That just wouldn't be right.
Image: Walt Disney Pictures
