Beauty and the Beast

### Written By

Linda Woolverton, Roger Allers, Brenda Chapman, Chris Sanders, Burny Mattinson, Kevin Harkey, Brian Pimental, Bruce Woodside, Joe Ranft, Tom Ellery, Kelly Asbury and Robert Lence

### Production Companies

Walt Disney Pictures
 Walt Disney Feature Animation
 Silver Screen Partners IV

### Distributors

Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
 Warners Bros.

### Followed By

Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas

**Beauty and the Beast** is a 1991 film. It was produced by Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Feature Animation and Silver Screen Partners IV, and distributed by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution and Warners Bros.. The film was written by Linda Woolverton, Roger Allers, Brenda Chapman, Chris Sanders, Burny Mattinson, Kevin Harkey, Brian Pimental, Bruce Woodside, Joe Ranft, Tom Ellery, Kelly Asbury and Robert Lence, and released on November 22, 1991.

It is the first film in the Beauty and the Beast Franchise.

## Plot

An enchantress disguised as a beggar woman offers a rose to a cruel and selfish prince in exchange for shelter from a storm. When he refuses, she reveals her identity and, for the prince's arrogance, she transforms him into a horrendous beast and his servants into household objects. She casts a spell on the rose and warns the prince that the spell will only be broken if he learns to love another and be loved in return before the last petal falls, or he will remain a beast forever.

Ten years later, in a nearby village, Belle, the book-loving daughter of an eccentric inventor named Maurice, dreams of adventure. She frequently tries avoiding Gaston, a narcissistic hunter who wants to marry her because of her beauty. On his way to a fair to showcase his latest invention, an automatic wood-chopper, Maurice gets lost in the forest and seeks refuge in the Beast's castle, but the Beast imprisons him for trespassing. When Maurice's horse returns without him, Belle ventures out searching for him, and finds him locked in the castle dungeon. The Beast agrees to free Maurice if she takes his place as prisoner.

Belle befriends the castle's servants: Lumière the candelabra, Cogsworth the clock, Mrs. Potts the teapot, and her son Chip, the teacup; they serve her a dinner through song. When she wanders into the forbidden west wing and finds the rose, the Beast catches her and angrily forces her to flee the castle. In the woods, she is ambushed by a pack of wolves, but the Beast rescues her and is injured in the process. As Belle nurses his injuries, a rapport develops between them and as time passes, they begin to fall in love.

Meanwhile, Maurice returns to the village and fails to convince the townsfolk of Belle's predicament. Hearing Maurice's statements about the Beast, Gaston hatches a plan: He bribes Monsieur D'Arque, the warden of the town's insane asylum, to have Maurice locked up as a lunatic. With no one to support her, Belle would have no choice but to marry Gaston. Before they can act, however, Maurice leaves for the castle to attempt a rescue alone.

After sharing a romantic dance with the Beast, Belle uses the Beast's magic mirror to check on her father and sees him collapsing in the woods. The Beast releases her to save Maurice, giving her the mirror as a souvenir. After Belle takes her father to the village, a band of villagers led by Gaston arrives to detain Maurice. Belle uses the mirror to show the Beast to the townsfolk, proving her father's sanity. Realizing that Belle loves the Beast, a jealous Gaston has her and her father locked in the basement and rallies the villagers to follow him to the castle to slay the Beast. With the help of Chip, who arrived at their house as a stowaway, and Maurice's wood-chopping machine, Maurice and Belle escape and rush back to the castle.

During the battle, the Beast's servants fend off the villagers. Gaston attacks the Beast in his tower, who is too depressed from Belle's departure to fight back but regains his spirit upon seeing Belle return. He defeats Gaston but spares his life before reuniting with Belle. However, Gaston fatally stabs the Beast with a knife, right before falling from the ledge to his own death. The Beast dies in Belle's arms before the last petal falls. Belle tearfully professes her love to the Beast, and the spell is undone, reviving the Beast, and restoring his human form along with all of his servants and his castle. The Prince and Belle host a ball for the kingdom, where they dance happily.

## Cast and Characters

* Paige O'Hara as Belle
* Robby Benson as Beast
* Richard White as Gaston
* Jerry Orbach as Lumière
* David Ogden Stiers as Cogworth
* Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Potts
* Bradley Pierce as Chip
* Rex Everhart as Maurice
* Jesse Corti as Lefou
* Jo Anne Worley as The Wardrobe
* Hal Smith as Philippe
* Mary Kay Bergman and Kath Soucie as The Bimbettes
* Brian Cummings as The Stove
* Alvin Epstein as The Bookseller
* Tony Jay as Monsieur D'Arque
* Alec Murphy as The Baker
* Kimmy Robertson as The Featherduster
* Frank Welker as Sultan

## Sequels

* Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas (1997)
* Belle's Magical World (1998)
* Belle's Tale of Friendship (1999)

## Production

### Early Versions

After the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, Walt Disney sought out other stories to adapt into feature films, with Beauty and the Beast being among the stories he considered. Attempts to develop the Beauty and the Beast story into a film were made in the 1930s and 1950s, but were ultimately given up because it "proved to be a challenge" for the story team. Peter M. Nichols states Disney may later have been discouraged by Jean Cocteau having already done his 1946 version.

Decades later, during the production of Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1987, the Disney studio resurrected Beauty and the Beast as a project for the satellite animation studio it had set up in London, England to work on Roger Rabbit. Richard Williams, who had directed the animated portions of Roger Rabbit, was approached to direct but declined in favour of continuing work on his long-gestating project The Thief and the Cobbler. In his place, Williams recommended his colleague, English animation director Richard Purdum, and work began under producer Don Hahn on a non-musical version of Beauty and the Beast set in 19th-century France. At the behest of Disney CEO Michael Eisner, Beauty and the Beast became the first Disney animated film to use a screenwriter. This was an unusual move for an animated film, which is traditionally developed on storyboards rather than in a scripted form. Linda Woolverton wrote the original draft of the story before storyboarding began and worked with the story team to retool and develop the film.

### Script Re-write and Musicalisation

Upon seeing the initial storyboard reels in 1989, Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg was dissatisfied with Purdum's idea and ordered that the film be scrapped and started over from scratch. A few months after starting anew, Purdum resigned as director. The studio had approached John Musker and Ron Clements to direct the film, but they turned down the offer, saying they were "tired" after just having finished directing Disney's recent success The Little Mermaid. Katzenberg then hired first-time feature directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale. Wise and Trousdale had previously directed the animated sections of Cranium Command, a short film for a Disney EPCOT theme park attraction. In addition, wanting another musical film, Katzenberg asked songwriters Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, who had written the song score for The Little Mermaid, to turn Beauty and the Beast into a Broadway-style musical film in the same vein as Mermaid. Ashman, who at the time had learned he was dying of complications from AIDS, had been working with Disney on a pet project of his, Aladdin, and only reluctantly agreed to join the struggling production team. To accommodate Ashman's failing health, pre-production of Beauty and the Beast was moved from London to the Residence Inn in Fishkill, New York, close to Ashman's New York City home. Here, Ashman and Menken joined Wise, Trousdale, Hahn, and Woolverton in retooling the film's script. Since the original story had only two major characters, the filmmakers enhanced them, added new characters in the form of enchanted household items who "add warmth and comedy to a gloomy story" and guide the audience through the film, and added a "real villain" in the form of Gaston.

These ideas were somewhat similar to elements of the 1946 French film version of Beauty and the Beast, which introduced the character of Avenant, an oafish suitor somewhat similar to Gaston, as well as inanimate objects coming to life in the Beast's castle. The animated objects were, however, given distinct personalities in the Disney version. By early 1990, Katzenberg had approved the revised script, and storyboarding began again. The production flew story artists back and forth between California and New York for storyboard approvals from Ashman, though the team was not told the reason why.

### Casting and Recording

Disney had originally considered casting Jodi Benson from The Little Mermaid as Belle. They eventually decided upon Broadway actress and singer Paige O'Hara in favour of having a heroine who sounded "more like a woman than a girl". According to co-director Kirk Wise, O'Hara was given the role because she "had a unique quality, a tone she would hit that made her special", reminiscent to that of American actress and singer Judy Garland. O'Hara, who, after reading about the film in The New York Times, competed for the role against 500 hopefuls, believes the fact that lyricist Howard Ashman admired her cast recording of the musical Show Boat proved integral in her being cast. Laurence Fishburne, Val Kilmer and Mandy Patinkin were originally considered to voice the Beast, the role was eventually given to actor Robby Benson. John Cleese was originally intended to voice Cogsworth, but later turned it down to voice Cat. R. Waul in the Universal Pictures animated film An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, and the role was eventually given to David Ogden Stiers. Julie Andrews was originally considered to voice Mrs. Potts, the role was eventually given to Angela Lansbury.

### Animation

Production of Beauty and the Beast was to be completed on a compressed timeline of two years rather than the traditional four-year Disney Feature Animation production schedule; this was due to the loss of production time spent developing the earlier Purdum version of the film. Most of the production was done at the main Feature Animation studio, housed in the Air Way facility in Glendale, California. A smaller team at the Disney-MGM Studios theme park in Lake Buena Vista, Florida assisted the California team on several scenes, particularly the "Be Our Guest" number.

Beauty and the Beast was the second film, after The Rescuers Down Under, produced using CAPS (Computer Animation Production System), a digital scanning, ink, paint, and compositing system of software and hardware developed for Disney by Pixar. The software allowed for a wider range of colours, as well as soft shading and coloured line effects for the characters, techniques lost when the Disney studio abandoned hand inking for xerography in the early 1960s. CAPS/ink & paint also allowed the production crew to simulate multiplane effects: placing characters and/or backgrounds on separate layers and moving them towards/away from the camera on the Z-axis to give the illusion of depth, as well as altering the focus of each layer.

In addition, CAPS/ink & paint allowed an easier combination of hand-drawn art with computer-generated imagery, which before had to be plotted to animation paper and then xeroxed and painted traditionally. This technique was put to significant use during the "Beauty and the Beast" waltz sequence, in which Belle and Beast dance through a computer-generated ballroom as the camera dollies around them in simulated 3D space. The filmmakers had originally decided against the use of computers in favour of traditional animation, but later, when the technology had improved, decided it could be used for the one scene in the ballroom. Before that, CGI environments had first been printed out as wireframe, but this was the first time Disney made use of 3D rendering. The success of the ballroom sequence helped convince studio executives to further invest in computer animation. The technology hardware that was used for the CGI was SGI, and the software that was used is Pixar's RenderMan.

The final dance between Belle and the Prince was reused from the final dance sequence between Princess Aurora and Prince Phillip from the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty. According to Trousdale, this was done because production of the film was nearing the deadline, and this was the easiest way to do that sequence.

## Release

### Work-in-Progress and Original Theatrical Run

In a first-time accomplishment for The Walt Disney Company, an unfinished version of Beauty and the Beast was shown at the New York Film Festival on September 29, 1991. The film was deemed a "work in progress" because roughly only 70% of the animation had been completed; storyboards and pencil tests were used in replacement of the remaining 30%. Additionally, certain segments of the film that had already been finished were reverted to previous stages of completion. At the end of the screening, Beauty and the Beast received a ten-minute-long standing ovation from the film festival audience. The completed film was also screened out of competition at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival. The finished film premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood on November 13, 1991, beginning a limited release before expanding wide on November 22.

### Re-issues

The film was restored and remastered for its New Year's Day, 2002 re-release in IMAX theatres in a special-edition edit, including a new musical sequence. For this version of the film, much of the animation was cleaned up, a new sequence set to the deleted song "Human Again" was inserted into the film's second act, and a new digital master from the original CAPS production files was used to make the high-resolution IMAX film negative.

A sing along edition of the film, hosted by Jordin Sparks, was released in select theatres on September 29 and October 2, 2010. Prior to the showing of the film, Sparks showed an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the newly restored film and the making of her new Beauty and the Beast music video. There was also commentary from producer Don Hahn, interviews with the cast and an inside look at how the animation was created.

A Disney Digital 3D version of the film, the second of a traditionally animated film, was originally scheduled to be released in US theatres on February 12, 2010, but the project was postponed. On August 25, 2011, Disney announced that the 3D version of the film would make its American debut at Hollywood's El Capitan Theatre from September 2–15, 2011. Disney spent less than $10 million on the 3D conversion. After the successful 3D re-release of The Lion King, Disney announced a wide 3D re-release of Beauty and the Beast in North America beginning January 13, 2012.

### Box Office

During its initial release in 1991, the film grossed $145.9 million in revenues in North America and $331.9 million worldwide. It ranked as the third-most successful film of 1991 in North America, surpassed only by the summer blockbusters Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. At the time Beauty and the Beast was the most successful animated Disney film release, and the first animated film to reach $100 million in the United States and Canada in its initial run. In its IMAX re-release, it earned $25.5 million in North America and $5.5 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $31 million. It also earned $9.8 million from its 3D re-release overseas. During the opening weekend of its North American 3D re-release in 2012, Beauty and the Beast grossed $17.8 million, coming in at the No. 2 spot, behind Contraband, and achieved the highest opening weekend for an animated film in January. The film was expected to make $17.5 million over the weekend; however, the results topped its forecast and the expectations of box office analysts. The re-release ended its run on May 3, 2012, and earned $47.6 million, which brought the film's total gross in North America to $219 million. It made an estimated $206 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $425 million. It was the highest-grossing film in Italy, surpassing the 39 billion lira grossed by Johnny Stecchino.

### Home Media

On October 30, 1992, in the United States and Canada, Walt Disney Home Video (currently known as Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment) released the film to VHS and LaserDisc as part of the Walt Disney Classics series, and later put it on moratorium on April 30, 1993, it was not included in the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection line. This version contains a minor edit to the film: skulls that appear in Gaston's pupils for two frames during his climactic fall to his death were removed for the original home video release. No such edit was made to later reissues of the film. The "work-in-progress" version screened at the New York Film Festival was also released on VHS and LaserDisc at this time; however, said version was the only one available on the latter format until the fall of 1993, when the completed theatrical version was released. This measure was to diminish the threat of video pirates making copies derived from the LaserDisc (which are not copy-protected) and selling them in international markets, where the film was yet to be available for home release. In 1993, the film was also released on home video in different countries, including the United Kingdom on September 20 of that year, and sold a record 8.5 million units.

Beauty and the Beast: Special Edition, as the enhanced version of the film released in IMAX/large-format is called, was released on two-disc "Platinum Edition" DVD and VHS on October 8, 2002. The DVD set features three versions of the film: the extended IMAX Special Edition with the "Human Again" sequence added, the original theatrical version, and the New York Film Festival "work-in-progress" version. This release went to "Disney Vault" moratorium status in January 2003, along with its direct-to-video follow-ups Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas and Belle's Magical World. The Special Edition DVD was released on November 2, 2002 in the United Kingdom, while the other 50 international territories released on Autumn 2002 as "Special Limited Edition".

The film was released from the vault on October 5, 2010 as the second of Disney's Diamond Editions, in the form of a three-disc Blu-ray Disc and DVD combination pack—the first release of Beauty and the Beast on home video in high-definition format. This edition consists of four versions of the film: the original theatrical version, an extended version, the New York Film Festival storyboard-only version, and a fourth iteration displaying the storyboards via picture-in-picture alongside the original theatrical version. Upon its first week of release, the Blu-ray sold 1.1 million units, topping the Blu-ray sales chart and finishing in third place on the combined Blu-ray and DVD sales chart for the week ending on October 10, 2010. It was the second-best-selling Blu-ray of 2010, behind Avatar. A two-disc DVD edition was released on November 23, 2010. A five-disc combo pack, featuring Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray 2D, DVD and a digital copy, was released on October 4, 2011. The 3D combo pack is identical to the original Diamond Edition, except for the added 3D disc and digital copy. The Blu-ray release went into the Disney Vault along with the two sequels on April 30, 2012.

A 25th-anniversary Signature Edition was released on Digital HD September 6, 2016 and was followed by Blu-ray/DVD combo pack on September 20, 2016. Upon its first week of release on home media in the U.S., the film topped the Blu-ray Disc sales chart, and debuted at number 3 in the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert chart, which tracks overall disc sales, behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows and Captain America: Civil War. The film was released on 4K digital download and Ultra HD Blu-ray on March 10, 2020.

## Reception

### Critical Response

Upon its release, Beauty and the Beast received widespread acclaim from critics and audiences alike for its animation, screenplay, characters, musical score, musical numbers, and voice acting. Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 94% based on reviews from 118 critics, with an average rating of 8.50/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Enchanting, sweepingly romantic, and featuring plenty of wonderful musical numbers, Beauty and the Beast is one of Disney's most elegant animated offerings." The film also holds a score of 95/100 on Metacritic, which indicates the reviews as "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare "A+" grade.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised the film with the following statement, "Two years ago, Walt Disney Pictures reinvented the animated feature, not only with an eye toward pleasing children, but also with an older, savvier audience in mind. Disney truly bridged a generation gap with The Little Mermaid ... Now, lightning has definitely struck twice with Beauty and the Beast." Awarding the film a perfect score of four stars, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times compared Beauty and the Beast positively to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, writing, "Beauty and the Beast reaches back to an older and healthier Hollywood tradition in which the best writers, musicians and filmmakers are gathered for a project on the assumption that a family audience deserves great entertainment, too." In 2001 Ebert again gave the IMAX re-release a full 4 out of 4 stars. James Berardinelli of ReelViews rated the film similarly while hailing it as "the finest animated movie ever made", writing, "Beauty and the Beast attains a nearly-perfect mix of romance, music, invention, and animation." The use of computer animation, particularly in the ballroom sequence, was singled out in several reviews as one of the film's highlights. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post gave the film a positive review, calling the film "A delightfully satisfying modern fable, a near-masterpiece that draws on the sublime traditions of the past while remaining completely in sync with the sensibility of its time." Janet Maslin of The New York Times gave the film a positive review, saying "It is a surprise, in a time of sequels and retreads, that the new film is so fresh and altogether triumphant in its own right." Dave Kehr of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three out of four stars, saying "Beauty and the Beast is certainly adequate holiday entertainment for children and their more indulgent parents ... But the film has little of the technical facility, vivid characterization and emotional impact of Disney past."

Jay Boyar of the Orlando Sentinel gave the film four out of five stars, saying "It's not an especially scary movie, but right from the start, you can tell that this Beauty and the Beast has a beauty of a bite." John Hartl of The Seattle Times gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying "It's exceptionally difficult to make an audience care for animated characters unless they're mermaids or anthropomorphized animals or insects, yet the Disney animators, with a big assist from the vocal talents of a superb cast, have pulled it off." Gene Siskel, also of the Chicago Tribune, gave the film four out of four stars, saying "Beauty and the Beast is one of the year's most entertaining films for both adults and children." On their Beauty and the Beast edition of Siskel & Ebert, both Siskel and Roger Ebert proclaimed that the film is "a legitimate contender for Oscar consideration as Best Picture of the Year." Michael Sragow of The New Yorker gave the film a positive review, saying "It's got storytelling vigour and clarity, bright, eclectic animation, and a frisky musical wit." Eric Smoodin writes in his book Animating Culture that the studio was trying to make up for earlier gender stereotypes with this film. Smoodin also states that, in the way it has been viewed as bringing together traditional fairy tales and feminism as well as computer and traditional animation, the film's "greatness could be proved in terms of technology narrative or even politics". Animation legend Chuck Jones praised the film, in a 1992 guest appearance on Later with Bob Costas he claimed he "Loved it. I think it should have won [Best Picture] ... I think the animation on the beast is one of the greatest pieces of animation I've seen".

Animation historian Michael Barrier wrote that Belle "becomes a sort of intellectual less by actually reading books, it seems, than by hanging out with them", but says that the film comes closer than other "Disney-studio" films to "accepting challenges of the kind that the finest Walt Disney features met". David Whitley writes in The Idea of Nature in Disney Animation that Belle is different from earlier Disney heroines in that she is mostly free from the burdens of domestic housework, although her role is somewhat undefined in the same way that "contemporary culture now requires most adolescent girls to contribute little in the way of domestic work before they leave home and have to take on the fraught, multiple responsibilities of the working mother". Whitley also notes other themes and modern influences, such as the film's critical view of Gaston's chauvinism and attitude towards nature, the cyborg-like servants, and the father's role as an inventor rather than a merchant.

Beauty and the Beast has been named one of Disney's most critically acclaimed films. In 2010, IGN named Beauty and the Beast as the greatest animated film of all time, directly ahead of WALL-E, The Incredibles, Toy Story 2, and The Iron Giant.

Most critics regard the 1991 animated film as superior to the 2017 live-action remake. Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune said that the 1991 film "worked wonderfully because it was pure Broadway, written for the screen, blending comedy and romance and magic and just enough snark in the margins", while the 2017 remake got lost in translation since "The movie takes our knowledge and our interest in the material for granted. It zips from one number to another, throwing a ton of frenetically edited eye candy at the screen, charmlessly." Phillips also wrote of the 2017 film that "too often we're watching highly qualified performers, plus a few less conspicuously talented ones (Watson, primarily), stuck doing karaoke, or motion-capture work of middling quality". Dana Schwartz of the Observer criticized some of the 2017 film changes to the characters like Gaston and the Beast as regressive by watering down their distinguishing personalities from the 1991 film, also arguing that the added backstory to the characters in the 2017 version failed to "advance the plot or theme in any meaningful way". David Sims of The Atlantic wrote that the 2017 film "feels particularly egregious, in part, because it's so slavishly devoted to the original; every time it falls short of its predecessor (which is quite often), it's hard not to notice".

## Awards and Nominations

### American Film Institute

* AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies - Nominated
* AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions - No. 34
* AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains
	+ Belle - Nominated Hero
* AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs
	+ "Beauty and the Beast" - No. 62
	+ "Be Our Guest" - Nominated
* AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals - N0. 22
* AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - Nominated
* AFI's 10 Top 10 - No. 7 Animated Film