beauty and the beast

The eight-episode show will focus on Gaston and LeFou.

Ever wanted to know more about Gaston and LeFou?

Not only has the movie already crossed $1 billion worldwide after just three weeks in theaters, it’s not the #1 movie of 2017.

Wonder Woman and IT made a huge impression at the box office this year, but both failed to overtake 2017’s biggest hit: Beauty and the Beast. Released back in March, Disney’s blockbuster reimagining of its animated classic is still the highest-grossing film of the year, and as we wade into the prestigious waters of awards season, the studio is making sure that voters don’t forget about it.

Since Dennis Miller hosted the very first MTV Movie Awards back in 1992, the music channel’s annual award ceremony has been something of a fun dalliance into a world where the artistic merit of a movie is less important than its popular clout. This year marks a couple of big changes for the format: not only did the award show change its official name  —  it is now known as the MTV Movie & TV Awards  —  it also has become arguably the most inclusive award show to date, honoring titles like Moonlight, Get Out, and Jane the Virgin alongside its stalwart categories like Best Kiss and Best Villain.

In a week devoid of any major releases, we still saw some major changes at the box office, with familiar faces like Kong: Skull Island, Power Rangers, and Get Out (RIP) all falling from the Top 10 in favor of new releases or aggressively expanding art films. Of course, not everything was different; if you read these box office reports every weekend, I’ll bet you can name the top three movies (in order) with minimal effort. Here’s the weekend box office projections as of Sunday afternoon:

Audiences don’t turn their back on family. That’s the lesson to be learned from this past weekend, anyways, when The Fate of the Furious proved that this is one franchise showing no signs of slowing down. It was never a question of whether The Fate of the Furious would take the top spot this weekend, but even the most optimistic of projections couldn’t have expected the global domination that this movie undertook. Here’s the box office estimates as of Sunday afternoon:

Welcome to the calm before the storm. With a handful of blockbuster movies already released, and more on the way, the second weekend in April was a relatively quiet affair, with a few old favorites dominating the weekend yet again and a few new releases grabbing whatever box office they could before things get fast and furious at your local multiplex. Let’s take a look at the projected grosses through Sunday afternoon.

In a parallel universe where Paramount Pictures doesn’t alienate its fanbase, we might be talking about Ghost in the Shell as the big winner of this weekend and the de facto start of a new wave of Japanese Hollywood adaptations. Instead, DreamWorks Animation and The Boss Baby blew up the box office, no doubt delighting a handful of DreamWorks executives who watched the Ghost in the Shell controversy unfold with glasses of champagne in hand. After all, nobody’s going to boycott a movie about a baby who wears a suit.

After several weeks of limited movement, a handful of new releases prompted a pretty thorough shakeup of the Box Office Top 10. While Beauty and the Beast continued its unstoppable assault on the domestic box office, we also said hello this weekend to three new movies and goodbye to a handful of old favorites from the first few months of the year. Let’s start with the estimated numbers as of Sunday afternoon.

From the good—Emma Watson and the music—to the beastly—LeFou's 'gay moment' joke and the jarring CGI objects, one lifelong Disney fan reviews 2017's 'Beauty and the Beast.'

Earlier today, it looked like the Cold War was about to ramp back up again (as if it hasn’t already) when it was announced that Russia might be banning the new live-action Beauty and the Beast because of that “exclusively gay moment” involving Gaston’s sidekick LeFou (Josh Gad). But never fear, reports of Russia’s response to the movie have been overblown (much like the response over here to that particular scene): instead of banning it outright, they’re giving it a mature rating.