Determined not to be the anthropomorphic candelabra who’s forced to just sort of awkwardly stand around watching while Beauty And The Beast get it on everywhere, Disney has hired Bill Condon to direct its live-action reimagining of the fairy tale, first announced last year. In the interim, the studio has enjoyed more fairy-tale reimagining success with Maleficent, completed another live-action retelling in Cinderella, and similarly thrown down on a new Jungle Book in the face of threatened competition, so it’s no surprise that it would remain serious about pursuing a new Beauty, even amid several others pursuing the same territory—including Guillermo del Toro’s long-rumored take, Christophe Gans’ version from earlier this year, and the ongoing TV series at The CW. And that’s to say nothing of the two dozen or so adaptations that have come before, involving beauties and beasts from Jean Cocteau to Mary-Kate Olsen.
But as with all fairy tales and childhood memories, Disney will claim what’s theirs. Evan Spiliotopoulos (writer of several straight-to-video Disney sequels that have long captivated children in the aisles of Wal-Mart) is drafting a screenplay to be directed by Condon, whose work on The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn has prepared him for stories about girls with monster fetishes. And then Disney can move on to whatever movies from its library remain un-reimagined. Which, at this point, is pretty much Monkeys, Go Home!—which doesn’t sound so bad, actually. Maybe this time, the monkeys could work in the tech sector.