Disney's upcoming live-action fairy tale adaptation Beauty and the Beast will be the fist to follow directly in its predecessor's footsteps and go full musical. It will not, however, be the only one to do that. One of the Disney classics set for adaptation down the road is Aladdin and producer Dan Lin recently revealed that whoever they find to play the title role is going to need to have one particular skill. He's got to be able to carry a tune.
We're gonna be discovering new people because it's a real challenge, because not only does an actor have to act, but they really have to have singing chops.
The first couple adaptations from Disney, Maleficent and Cinderella did not include any musical elements, while last year's The Jungle Book only included a couple of musical numbers. However next month's Beauty and the Beast will include all of the classic songs from the animated version along with a couple of brand new ones as well. Based on Dan Lin's comments to Collider, it sounds like Aladdin will as well.
The fact that the new Aladdin looks to be a musical means it's looking to very much follow in the footsteps of Beauty and the Beast. We can be fairly confident that the movie will get is planning to follow the animated feature fairly closely. It will be interesting to see if this is indicative of what the studio is planning for all future adaptation. Disney has Mulan set to come out in 2018 and a number of other live-action adaptions in development. There's been no specific indication that any of them will be musicals. It might be safe to start assuming that they will be unless we hear otherwise.
There's a good chance that many of the more recent releases, like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, will likely go the musical route. As Josh Gad, who co-stars in Beauty and the Beast pointed out to me when I interviewed him last year, the audience that grew up with those movies and those songs are still around and still going to movies, they're going to want to hear that music.
Aladdin is currently without a release date, though the fact that Guy Ritchie is on board to direct it would seem to imply that it will be one of the next features out of the gate. March of 2019 is the next open slot according to the current release schedule, although there was supposed to be a live-action fairy tale film hitting this summer that obviously isn't happening unless they've somehow kept production a complete secret.
Aladdin certainly has some great songs so we're not against seeing it become a musical. We're guessing there are a lot of fans that will be happy with this news. Let us hear you in the comments below.
