Two years ago, Emma Watson jumped on board a film called Beauty, a live-action Beauty and the Beast adaptation. This is not to be confused with the other live-action adaptation taking shape over at Disney, which Bill Condon signed on to direct last week.
This particular iteration of the classic story is in Warner Brothers’ hands, and was intended to be helmed by Guillermo del Toro. Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas’ Denise di Novi was also on board as a producer. Today, however, del Toro reportedly dropped out of the project, which is quite a shame, because he and di Novi would have made quite the team.
Deadline reported the story, only citing del Toro’s other commitments as the reason for vacating the director’s hair. That definitely makes sense, considering he’s still working on his haunted house film Crimson Peak, and has a plethora of upcoming projects on his plate including a possible Pacific Rim sequel, a live-action Pinocchio, and a possible Justice League Dark film for Warner Bros. (Though recent developments about the studio’s upcoming superhero slate hint that the Dark project may not be happening.)
Beauty is just one of many live-action fairy tale adaptations coming our way, and isn’t the only one that has multiple versions in the works from multiple studios and directors. Thankfully, Watson is still on board the project, though with del Toro gone, the film now exists in a sort of limbo state while the studio looks for someone else to take the helm.
