When Disney's tale as old as time premieres next week — with a few changes, good or bad, you make up your own mind — one Alabama theater won't be showing it. According to Entertainment Weekly, the owners of the Henagar Drive-In in Henagar, AL, are axing plans to show Beauty and the Beast because of news that the new live-action remake will include a gay character.
The drive-in's new owners (the theater came under new ownership last year) posted the news on Facebook, giving fans some time to find a different movie theater from which to get their Disney fix.
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"When companies continually force their views on us we need to take a stand," reads the Facebook post. "If we can not take our 11-year-old granddaughter and 8-year-old grandson to see a movie we have no business watching it. If I can't sit through a movie with God or Jesus sitting by me then we have no business showing it. I know there will be some that do not agree with this decision. That's fine […] We will continue to show family oriented films so you can feel free to come watch wholesome movies without worrying about sex, nudity, homosexuality, and foul language."
This week, news of LeFou's sexuality broke across the internet. In an interview with Attitude, director Bill Condon stated that LeFou is discovering his sexuality and that realizing that he has feelings toward men. "LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston," he explained. "He's confused about what he wants."
As for LeFou himself, Josh Gad, who plays the character in the film, had some opinions on his role, too. At the film's premiere, he said that the changes addressing LeFou's sexuality made him more complex and human.
"Bill Condon did an amazing job of giving us an opportunity to create a version of LeFou that isn't like the original, that expands on what the original did, but that makes him more human and that makes him a wonderfully complex character to some extent," Gad told EW.
Some commenters on the Henagar Drive-In's Facebook page (the post has over 1,000 comments) aren't happy with the theater's decision, noting that it is forcing its own views on the community.