Disney Plus ‘Beauty and the Beast’ prequel ‘Little Town’ to shoot this spring

The 2017 live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast was a smash-hit for Disney, grossing over $1.2 billion dollars, picking up critical adulation, and ending up with two Academy Award nominations. After that success, it’s no surprise that the studio was eager to return to the property, but even so, last year’s announcement of prequel TV show Little Town has raised eyebrows.

This will focus on Luke Evans’ Gaston and Josh Gad’s LeFou, featuring new songs from Alan Menken over its eight episodes. Now Gad has shed some light on the show in a new interview with Variety, confirming that it’s going before the cameras very soon:

“We’re still planning on shooting this spring and the scripts are incredible, the music is unbelievable, all-new songs by Alan Menken, we’re casting now.”

He also revealed that these will be origin stories for the characters:

“You’re going to have to tune in when this show airs to see what we’re working up, but in the process of working on it, we’re asking ourselves every relevant question about these characters and endeavoring to do right by them and by this world. I think that we have origin stories here that are unbelievably exciting because they’re unexpected. And I think ‘expect the unexpected’ is all I can really say. And not just with regard to LeFou and Gaston but to a lot of the new characters that we’re introducing.”

It’s possible the show may also feature Dan Stevens’ pre-transformation Beast. The live-action movie indicated he’d been in his monstrous form for almost a decade, so if this is a prequel, the timelines may align to show that Gaston and Beast’s stories intertwined more closely than first anticipated.

One person who probably won’t be along for the ride is Emma Watson. Belle would be between 5 and 7 years old in this period, so if she is a part of the plot, she’ll be too young to do much of note. Once the shoot begins, we should get some pictures from the set that clear a lot of this up, so let’s hope Little Town stays on track to shoot this spring.