Beauty and the Beast TV series shelved
The Beauty and the Beast prequel series has been shelved just days after Rita Ora's casting.
The Disney+ show will not be moving forward to film this year as planned, co-creator and star Josh Gad confirmed on Twitter.
"Sadly, 'Tis true," Gad wrote after reports of the indefinite delay broke on Thursday. "We tried to make it all work but under the gun it wasn't meant to be... for now. These characters and this story will live on, but sometimes the best intentions & reality collide & nothing can be done."
In a follow-up tweet, he added, "But… we truly hope we get to make it when our schedules allow."
His co-star Luke Evans also tweeted, "This is a very sad message for us to tweet. We are devastated. Goodbye, for now, from Gaston and Le fou."
The announcement comes just days after Ora announced on Instagram that she had landed a role in the series.
Sources told Deadline that the call to shelve the show, in which Gad and Evans were set to reprise their roles as LeFou and Gaston, was made for creative reasons.
They claim the scripts and original music did not come together in the direction expected and hinted at creative differences. The project is now on hold as pushing filming further into the autumn was not an option due to talent availability and weather concerns.
Briana Middleton, Fra Fee and Jelani Alladin had also been cast. It was to serve as a prequel to the 2017 live-action version of Disney's 1991 animated classic.
Gad is a writer on the project and Tony Award-nominated director Liesl Tommy was to direct the first episode. Composer Alan Menken, who scored both the 1991 and 2017 Beauty and the Beast movies, was involved in the soundtrack.
