It’s a tale as old as time, and one that has racked up more than $1 billion at the worldwide box office. Disney announced in a press release that director Bill Condon’s live action musical remake of Beauty and the Beast is the first film to cross the $1 billion in 2017. Moreover, the Emma Watson and Dan Stevens starrer is the highest grossing live-action movie musical of all time. Looks like an awful lot of people took that sexy man-candle Lumière and his backup cutlery up on that invitation to be their guest.
While the monetary milestone may seem par for the course for Disney, which released five of the top 10 highest-grossing films of 2016 (and four that made more than $1 billion worldwide), it is particularly impressive for Beauty and the Beast when compared to other live-action movie musicals. The film was clearly meant for more than this provincial life as it effectively dunked on the competition by earning $600 million more than its closest competitor, Grease. Sure, La La Land may have all those Oscars (except, you know, Best Picture), but Beauty and the Beast has more than double its $438 million global box office.
But it is important to note “live-action” qualifier. For example, Frozen has Beauty and the Beast beat with a $1.2 billion worldwide gross, and if you adjust 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for inflation, it’s somewhere in the vicinity of $1.6 billion worldwide.
So what does this mean for you–the handsome, smart, impossibly charismatic Nerdist reader? Well, it means that you’d better get used to seeing your childhood repurposed, remixed, and reimagined in live action on the big screen because time is a flat circle at the House of Mouse, and that circle is full of cash. Considering that Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book made nearly $1 billion worldwide last year and Beauty and the Beast crossed that threshold this year, Disney won’t stop remaking its animated classics in live action anytime soon. With Jon Favreau helming an adaptation of The Lion King, Guy Ritchie directing Aladdin, Niki Caro tackling Mulan, and Tim Burton making what is presumably an even spookier version of Dumbo, Disney is going to need another Scrooge McDuck-worthy vault for all the sweet, sweet cash they’re making off of our nostalgia addiction.
What other live-action Disney remakes are you excited for? What other films do you think will cross $1 billion? Let us know in the comments below.
Images: Disney
Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. Follow him on Twitter (@Osteoferocious).
Our Beauty and the Beast-meets-Migos parody SHOULD be the highest-grossing live action musical though…
