Beauty and the Beast

***Beauty and the Beast*** is a 1991 American animated musical romantic fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 30th Disney animated feature film and the third released during the Disney Renaissance period, it is based on the 1756 fairy tale of the same name by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (who was only credited in the French dub), while also containing ideas from the 1946 French film of the same name directed by Jean Cocteau. The film was directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise (in their feature directorial debuts) and produced by Don Hahn, from a screenplay by Linda Woolverton.

*Beauty and the Beast* focuses on the relationship between the Beast (voice of Robby Benson), a prince who is magically transformed into a monster and his servants into household objects as punishment for his arrogance, and Belle (voice of Paige O'Hara), a young woman whom he imprisons in his castle in exchange for her father's freedom. To break the curse, the Beast must learn to love Belle and earn her love in return before the last petal falls from an enchanted rose or else he will remain a monster forever. Aside from O'Hara and Benson, the film also features the voices of Richard White, Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers, and Angela Lansbury.

Walt Disney first attempted to adapt *Beauty and the Beast* into an animated film during the 1930s and 1950s, but was unsuccessful. Following the success of *The Little Mermaid* (1989), Walt Disney Pictures decided to adapt the fairy tale, which Richard Purdum originally conceived as a non-musical period drama. After seeing a test reel, Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg scrapped Purdum's idea and ordered that the film be a musical similar to *The Little Mermaid* instead. Lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken wrote the film's songs. Ashman, who additionally served as the film's executive producer, died of AIDS-related complications six months before the film's release, and the film is thus dedicated to his memory.

*Beauty and the Beast* premiered as an unfinished film at the New York Film Festival on September 29, 1991, followed by its theatrical release as a completed film at the El Capitan Theatre on November 13. The film grossed $331 million at the box office worldwide on a $25 million budget and received widespread acclaim for its romantic narrative, animation (particularly the ballroom scene), characters, and musical numbers. *Beauty and the Beast* won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, the first animated film to ever win that category. It also became the first animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture at the 64th Academy Awards (ultimately losing to *The Silence of the Lambs*), where it won the Academy Award for Best Original Score and Best Original Song for its title song and received additional nominations for Best Original Song and Best Sound. In April 1994, *Beauty and the Beast* became Disney's first animated film to be adapted into a Broadway musical, which ran until 2007.

An IMAX version of the film was released in 2002 and included the new song "Human Again", originally an eight-minute storyboarded musical sequence ultimately replaced with "Something There", but later revised in the 1994 musical as a five-minute piece. That same year, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". After the success of the 3D re-release of *The Lion King*, the film was reissued in 3D in 2012. In 2014, *Time* magazine ranked *Beauty and the Beast* as the greatest film of the Disney Renaissance and one of the greatest animated films of all time.

Other derived works and material inspired by the film, include a 2017 live-action remake of the film directed by Bill Condon, which was released on March 17, 2017, and a 2022 musical presentation of the film on ABC as part of *The Wonderful World of Disney*.