Like Cruella de Vil and Maleficent before him, cloddish Gaston is getting his time to shine with a movie featuring him with neither Beauty nor Beast.

The character, introduced in Disney’s 1991’s animated Beauty and the Beast and played by Luke Evans in the 2017 live-action version, will get his own sympathetic (we assume) origin story in a new movie written by Dave Callaham. Michelle Rejwan is said to be producing, but apart from that little is known.

Callaham, who wrote or co-wrote films such as Mortal Kombat, Godzilla, Shang-Chi, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Rejwan has produced multiple Star Wars movies.

Evans will probably not return to play the character this time, and if that’s the case it’s unlikely Josh Gad will return to the Disney fold to play the part of Gaston’s right-hand man Le Fou.

Gaston was introduced as an arrogant and ruthless hunter who had unrequited feelings for beautiful but independent Belle, who refuses his offers of marriage. Rejected, he turns his ire upon The Beast and serves as the villain of the film. He’s introduced with a classic song that tells us, among other things, that he uses antlers in all his decorating.

Following the billion-dollar box office success of the 2017 live-action BatB, there was discussion of a TV series centered on the character, with Evans and Gad reprising their roles, but that project was scrapped.

According to Deadline, sources say Disney is excited about the Gaston movie, which will be a new and original story with a new actor, and that the film will have “swashbuckling” tones to it.

Gaston would be the latest character in Disney’s villain series of movies, following Maleficent in 2014 and Cruella in 2021.