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This Friday marks the premiere of Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast. The hotly anticipated film will be Disney’s 7th live-action fairy tale blockbuster and is basically the company’s way of planting their flag onto the fantasy genre. There were sporadic competitors but ultimately Disney’s brand of big-budget fable has become the defining name in post-Game of Thrones mega-fantasy. What’s more, the film is the first major live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast in decades, certainly the first major attempt to try and realize the Beast with CGI.
Given the occasion, I thought it’d only be fair to take a look back at the last time this particular fairy tale was given a major release. Back before Disney’s animated adaptation became the Oscar-winning success that completely defines this story there was another Beauty and the Beast, a bizarre 1987 TV series that time has more or less rejected despite featuring Linda Hamilton, Ron Perlman, and George RR Martin, the father of modern fantasy. With such a pedigree how is this series not more widely known; let’s find out.
