The Walt Disney Company deluged shareholders this week during a company meeting, in which the Hollywood giant announced an aggressive new slate of films and streaming series to expect in the coming years. Among them: a limited prequel series to the 2017 live-action version of Beauty & the Beast centered on Gaston and Lefou.
The Gaston series will see actors Luke Evans and Josh Gad reprise their roles as Gaston and Lefou from the film. Gad will also pen scripts for the show, which will expand on the magical world of the film. Entertainment Weekly also reports that composer Alan Menkin will return to compose new music for the show.
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The series should come as a particular interest for LGBTQ viewers, as director Bill Condon noted that he considered Lefou gay in the 2017 movie. The film does portray Lefou as an enthusiastic wrestler of other men, and does briefly show him slow dancing with another man. Some critics accused the film of queerbaiting for such subtle hints at Lefou’s sexuality. The series has the potential to expand on the Gaston-Lefou relationship over the course of its six episodes.
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Disney has not announced a release date for the series at the time of this writing. The company has set it for release on the streaming service Disney+.
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Donston
The problem is, who is really asking for this? It’s not like Gaston is one of the more “iconic” Disney villains, and no one really cares about Lefou. While a lot of Beauty and the Beast fans were disappointed by the live action rendition. A Gaston centric prequel will likely focus on him being in a war, which doesn’t feel that connected to the appeal of Beauty and the Beast. And in order to make those two characters intriguing and able to hold up their own story, you pretty much have to re-write the characters and make them something that they’re not. For example, if Lefou is gonna be unabashedly “queer” then there’s no way around writing him as someone who is foolish and an idiot and someone who enables toxic masculinity. There’s also no way to write around him being a “straight”/hetero-leaning/closeted worshiper. And how is any of that gonna appeal to those movies’ core demo or gonna be “positive representation”? I guess they could pull a Maleficent and completely ignore the source material. A sequel centered on those two makes more sense.
Josh and Luke probably just want to work with each other again and want an opportunity to sing and dance. But they could’ve come up with some other type of collab. However, I guess these days Disney is green lighting everything attached to the classics.
Creamsicle
Yeah this just seems like a low-effort cash grab. Someone would rather put money behind two unremarkable but established characters than invest in something entirely original.
The idea of prequels to classic fairy tales seems pretty meta, and I kind of hate it. It assumes that all stories are self-contained, IP-protected universes instead of some just existing as stories. It also solidifies these classic fairy tales as Disney properties.
Liquid Silver
I’m up for a good Lefou job.
…personally, I’m neutral on the project, but it had to be said. Honestly, though, there’s a whole world of fairy and folk tales out there waiting to be mined, Disney, along with a host of modern fantasy stories just begging to be made into pure visual magic.
Wild_Puss
Josh Gad’s performance had no “subtle hints” that the character was gay. His portrayal was nothing less than a mincing, swishing, gay step-n-fetchit and a horrible, embarrassing insult to all of us.
Pistolo
The translation of “Lefou” is “THE FOOL”…he’s also a pathetic lackey, exclusively the butt of jokes in the original. That’s the conditions under which Disney will portray somebody as being gay. So long as you’re not empowered, peripheral, existing as an accessory to somebody else’s plot, and not being allowed to be anything but covert, you’re allowed in Disney’s fantasy if you’re a gay man. There never was anything, anything at all about this that was ever a credit or a net positive to us. It’s just the crumbs of their passive aggression, it’s disgusting.