Disney issued a press release announcing more casting for Bill Condon's live-action "Beauty and the Beast", as well as news that Alan Menken will score the film, which is scheduled for March 17, 2017 in 3D. The live-action film will feature new recordings of Menken and Howard Ashman's songs from the animated film, as well as new songs from Menken and Tim Rice.
This is unprecedented for sure. How many times do you see a composer score the remake to an earlier movie they scored? The new underscore should be interesting to hear at least.
Wow that is bizarre. The original is a classic. Exceptional score. How can he top that? I guess Menken will have to approach the live action version like a sequel musically speaking.
This is very interesting. "Beauty and the Beast" is arguably Menken's best score and now he's "remaking" it in a way. I'm happy that he's going to score a film but sad it's two years away. :-( I wish he would score more films. He should have done Frozen.
This is very interesting. "Beauty and the Beast" is arguably Menken's best score and now he's "remaking" it in a way. I'm happy that he's going to score a film but sad it's two years away. :-( I wish he would score more films. He should have done Frozen.
Agreed. There are some good songs in Frozen, but I would have loved to see what Menken would have done. This is good news though. Beauty and the Beast is his best score and it will certainly be interesting to see what he does with it.
I'm excited to hear what alan comes up with as the first one is a classic by todays standards. Though I love angela lansburry, it will be hard to top her performance.
This is very interesting. "Beauty and the Beast" is arguably Menken's best score and now he's "remaking" it in a way. I'm happy that he's going to score a film but sad it's two years away. :-( I wish he would score more films. He should have done Frozen.
Agreed. There are some good songs in Frozen, but I would have loved to see what Menken would have done. This is good news though. Beauty and the Beast is his best score and it will certainly be interesting to see what he does with it.
I believe Menken was slated to work on Frozen when it was called The Snow Queen, but for some reason dropped out. Maybe that was just rumor because of the success of Tangled and nothing official.
At first I thought this thread was announcing the Legacy Collection of Beauty and the Beast, but I realized 2016 will be the 25th Anniversary of the film, not 2017. I hope we'll see the LC next year!
Interesting turn of events. I would have preferred for them to hand over a brand new animated musical film to this man than a remake of something he's gone through two times already (i.e. a motion picture, and a stage adaption). I suppose since he extended his musical numbers in the stage adaption he just had to extend his score work for the concept too!
Children of the Corn was scored by Jonathan Elias - original and remake.
I guess it was ordered by Disney that Menken be the composer, Condon I guess wouldn't have much say in this case.
Those are exceptions to the rule, but it's still uncommon.
And judging by the press reports before the major announcements, Bill Condon was going to make this a big-budget musical. He had worked with the original composer on "Dreamgirls" for the songs, and I think Menken's involvement with BATB was suggested by Condon.
Or maybe it's a bit of Disney's 'suggested' choice and what Condon was looking for.
I recall Menken wrote at least 2 songs for his proposed score for THE SNOW QUEEN project. Both are available on YouTube, though I don't remember the song titles. The songs are OK, but not overly memorable.
So glad Disney is dedicating the 2nd CD to the score. Hopefully Menken will revisit the animated version's score where appropriate, there was so much wonderful underscore missing from the old CD release. The Legacy Collection seems to have stalled, I wonder if we'll ever see an expansion of the animated version score.
