Love is in the air for movie audiences as the Beauty and the Beast teaser trailer, just released on Monday, has surpassed Star Wars: The Force Awakens for the film teaser with the most views within its first 24-hours at 91.8 million (Star Wars came in with 88 million last year). The next two on the record list are Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Age of Ultron.
There is one thing all four of these films have in common: Disney. The record is both triumph for the ever-expanding studio as well as for women in film seeing as how the top viewership now belongs to the only exclusively female-led movie. Disney continues to turn their expansion into successful franchises, those being with Marvel, their fairly recent acquisition of LucasFilm Star Wars properties, and the increasingly popular lineup of live-action takes on their classic animated films. The most recent of these include Cinderella and The Jungle Book.
Beauty and the Beast will retell the classic fairy tale of the vain Prince put under a spell that turns him into a Beast. It is only the selfless love of a young woman that can bring him back to his true form. It will be intriguing to see how director Bill Condon (Eclipse) and adapters Evan Spiliotopoulos (Huntsman: Winter’s War) and Steven Chbosky (Perks of Being a Wallflower) will be able to bring the somewhat outdated material into the 21st Century (It is pretty unclear if the major detail of her being his prisoner will still hold up for audiences). That being said, Disney will have a lot riding on its outcome if the viewership for the teaser is any indication of its impending success at the box office.
Beauty and the Beast stars Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellan, Luke Evans, Emma Thompson, Josh Gad, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Stanley Tucci, and Kevin Kline. It will be released in theaters on March 17, 2017, with plenty of time to build even more momentum.
Once again, you can check out the teaser below:
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