'Beauty And The Beast' Spinoff Update: Luke Evans Explains The Progress Of The Gaston And LeFou Disney+ Show

A few days before the coronavirus pandemic brought the world to a screeching halt, word came out that Disney+ was developing a live-action Beauty and the Beast spinoff series that would tell a prequel story about what the arrogant Gaston (Luke Evans) and his submissive pal LeFou (Josh Gad) were doing before they entered the narrative of the movie. And while the pandemic has thrown a wrench into many a project over the past few months, it sounds like this one is still chugging full steam ahead.

Evans recently gave an update about the show's development progress, and things are moving right along. "Now, we're in fully fledged development," he told Collider. "The second and third episodes have been written and we've heard some of the music by Alan Menken. We're just so honored to have him on board writing the music, which is extraordinary in itself."

The fact that Menken, the eight-time Oscar winner who worked on the music for both Disney's 1991 animated Beauty and the Beast and the 2017 live-action remake, is already hard at work on the score for the show seems like a good sign that this show is going to make it to the starting blocks.

The initial announcement said the series would be "a six-episode musical event" which would "take place well before the events of the film and also expand the Beauty and the Beast universe." Does that mean we'll see Gaston and LeFou as soldiers fighting on the battlefield, as was mentioned in the billion dollar-grossing movie? Evans is still playing coy about the show's plot details, but he knows fans are wondering:

"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. There are a lot of questions about, where we will start? What we will 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."

Josh Gad and Once Upon a Time creators Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis created this series, and the trio will write all of the episodes and serve as co-showrunners, with all three of them executive producing alongside Evans. It's still unclear if other characters from the movie will have cameo appearances in this series, but I wouldn't be remotely surprised if Emma Watson dropped by to reprise her role as Belle. There's no word yet on when the show will actually begin filming, but it sounds like the pandemic hasn't hampered its development in the slightest.