No One Sue Like Gaston: Disney's Live-Action Villain Trend Goes Off the Rails with New Beauty and the Beast Spinoff

Jason Diaz
Dec 16, 2025
3 min read

The news dropped like a grand piano on a cartoon villain's head: Disney is developing a brand new live-action feature film centered entirely on Gaston, the muscle-bound, toxic ego-trip from Beauty and the Beast.

If you thought the live-action trend had hit peak IP saturation, you were wrong. The Mouse House just went full villain, proving that when the original well runs dry, Hollywood will simply dig up the antagonist and give him a "swashbuckling" anti-hero arc, whether it makes sense or not. And honestly? This is where the whole nostalgia machine truly starts to break down.

The Problem of the Anti-Hero Spinoff

This isn't a Maleficent situation. Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent had a tragic, complex backstory begging for exploration. Gaston? Gaston is a caricature of toxic masculinity. He’s the guy who tries to strong-arm a brilliant woman into marriage, rallies a lynch mob against a misunderstood creature, and then dies falling off a castle. His character arc is essentially: Bad Guy Does Bad Things, Bad Guy Gets What He Deserves.

So, what is the pitch here? The film, reportedly written by Dave Callaham (Shang-Chi) and produced by Michelle Rejwan, is being described as having a "swashbuckling" tone. Swashbuckling? Does this mean we follow Gaston through his youth, where he learns to punch things really hard and boast about himself in a catchy baritone? Does he get a moral dilemma about hunting that is immediately solved by punching something else?

This move reveals the true state of play in Hollywood right now: risk is dead. Original ideas are expensive. And rather than investing in the next great story, studios are forced to mine increasingly obscure and morally bankrupt characters simply because they have a recognizable name. The creative imperative isn't "What great story can we tell?" it's "What IP is sitting on the shelf that hasn't made us $500 million yet?"

The fact that this is a completely different project than the scrapped Disney+ prequel series with Luke Evans is a giant red flag. It shows how badly Disney wants to keep this IP alive and how they’re willing to throw writers and directors at the wall until something sticks.

The Recast: Luke Evans Is Out, New Face is In

Adding to the chaos, the new film will reportedly recast the role, replacing Luke Evans, who played the character in the 2017 live-action film. Evans was genuinely great in the role—he had the pipes, the pomp, and the perfect punchable smirk. Recasting suggests the tone is moving so far away from the original animated and live-action musical versions that they need a clean break.

This could mean a grittier, younger take, trying to capture that ambiguous anti-hero space currently occupied by characters like Cruella. But Gaston is the least ambiguous villain in the Disney canon. He is vain, shallow, and cruel. Turning him into a lovable rogue for a swashbuckling adventure requires a narrative backflip that might break the spine of the original story's theme.

Hollywood needs to take a long look in the mirror. When your blockbuster strategy involves giving the lynch mob leader his own epic adventure, maybe it’s time to find a new bookshelf to pull stories from. The Mouse House is becoming a monster, but not the kind we want to root for.