It looks like Rita Ora will soon be joining the world of Beauty and the Beast. The singer has officially been cast in Disney+‘s upcoming prequel to the 2017 live-action version of the fairy tale classic, playing “a fugitive with surprising abilities who carries with her a secret that could potentially affect an entire kingdom”. Ora joins Luke Evans and Josh Gad reprising their roles as Gaston and LeFou from the film, alongside newly added cast members Briana Middleton as LeFou‘s sister Tilly, Jelani Alladin as artist Jean-Michel, and Hawkeye star Fra Fee as Prince Benoit Berlioz.

Not much is known about the plot of the series, other than that it involves Gaston and LeFou embarking on an adventure somehow connected to Tilly’s past. Gad serves as the series’ co-showrunner in addition to starring, alongside Once Upon a Time helmers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. Liesl Tommy will direct the series’ pilot, and serve as executive producer alongside Gad and Evans. She “is planning to do some unbelievably ambitious things with this series,” Gad previously told Collider, “as well as our showrunners, Adam [Horowitz] and Eddie [Kitsis], who are really, really, really going places I think audiences are not necessarily ready for. I cannot be more excited about this show. I think it’s going to be enormously special.”

Alan Menken will also be an executive producer for the series, having written music for both the 2017 film on which the series is based, as well as the original, Academy Award-winning animated film from 1991, the latter of which he collaborated on with the late, great Howard Ashman. This is one of a number of current collaborations between the EGOT winner and Disney, alongside music for the 2023 live action version of The Little Mermaid, and a live action remake of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

No release date has been announced for the prequel series. In the meantime, fans can stream both versions of Beauty and the Beast on Disney+.

via Collider