No one makes new movies like Gaston!
Following the success of Universal's Wicked, which tells the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, Disney is working on a new live-action movie about the villain Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, according to Deadline.
Unfortunately for queer fans, this new project does not involve out actor Luke Evans, who played Gaston in the 2017 live-action Beauty and the Beast film. Instead, this new "swashbuckling" film will feature a new and original version of the character played by a new actor.
Michele Rejwan is producing the film, and Dave Callaham is writing a script after a previous draft done by Kate Herron (Loki, The Last of Us) and Briony Redman.
After the success of the 2017 live-action remake, Disney announced in 2020 that Evans would star in a spinoff Disney+ show alongside Josh Gad as Gaston and LeFou. The show was titled The Little Town and was slated to have six episodes.
"We feel so lucky to have this talented group of people creating a story about two much-loved and much-hated characters, but that's the excitement," Evans told Collider at the time. "There are a lot of questions about where we will start, what will we tell, who are these people, when you visit them where will they be? So it's going to be a really fun experience. Me and Josh are literally vibrating with excitement to shoot it."
Two years later, the show was put on hold "for creative reasons," but Evans said there was still hope the series would be made.
"We just wanna make sure that it is absolutely the best it can be, and if that means we just have to wait a little longer to finesse certain pieces of it, then that's what we're going to do because this is a very important legacy," Evans said. "We want to honor these characters with the best story we can possibly deliver. It's just on hold. It is gonna happen. We're very excited about it. At some point in the near future, it will happen."
In 2024, when Evans was on the cover of Out, he revealed that his Gaston show was "sadly... not on the table" anymore. Now, it seems as though Disney has decided to move on with the character, but without Evans.
Margaret Qualley as Honey O'Donahue in Honey Don'tCourtesy Focus Features 
Honey Don't filmmakers Tricia Cooke and Ethan Coen with star Margaret Qualley (center)
Margaret Qualley as Honey O'Donahue in Honey Don't Courtesy Focus Features 
