“Beauty And The Beast”: Emma Watson To Play Belle

Having long been rumored on the tumblr sphere, it looks like the brightest witch of her age has indeed finally been cast to play a Disney Princess.

Emma Watson, who a generation of readers and movie-goers will know best as Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series, announced her involvement this morning via her official facebook page.  We know it will be a live action musical production, possibly taking it’s cues from the award winning Broadway stage musical.  This information has been confirmed by several outlets including Entertainment Weekly and USA Today.

She stated:

I’m finally able to tell you… that I will be playing Belle in Disney’s new live-action Beauty and the Beast! It was such a big part of my growing up, it almost feels surreal that I’ll get to dance to ‘Be Our Guest’ and sing ‘Something There’. My six year old self is on the ceiling – heart bursting. Time to start some singing lessons. I can’t wait for you to see it

Needless to say, we’re rather excited to see how Ms. Watson performs. The adaptation is set to be directed by Dreamgirls‘s Bill Condon. Condon has stated this film will indeed be a musical featuring the 1991 animated film’s original Alan Menken and Howard Ashman songs, as well as new music from composer Menken. “Technology, we hope, has finally caught up to that treatment of the story, so I think we’re all kind of excited to bring that brilliant, amazing score and beautiful story into three dimensions,” Condon said.