The movie was adapted by Linda Woolverton from the story by Roger Allers and Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (uncredited). It was directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise. The music was by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman.
It won Academy Awards for Best Music, Original Score and Best Music, Song (for Alan Menken and Howard Ashman for "Beauty and the Beast"). Two other Menken and Ashman songs from the movie were also nominated for Best Music, Song ("Be Our Guest" and "Belle"). Beauty and the Beast was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Sound.
In 2002 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
This film inspired a Broadway stage musical which earned tremendous commercial success and multiple Tony Awards, and proved to be the first of a whole line of Disney stage productions. There are also Disney versions of the story published and sold as storybooks.
In 1997, a "midquel" called Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas was released directly to video.
Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers
When a prince refuses to let an ugly woman enter his castle with only a rose as a gift, she reveales herself to be a powerful enchantress and, finding no love in the prince's heart, transforms him into a Beast and the servants in the castle into tea cups, candles, furniture, etc. This spell can only be broken if the Beast learns to love another and receives her love in return by his 21st birthday.
The "Beauty" of the title, a girl named Belle in a French village, is the daughter of a loony inventor. She works hard to avoid the unwanted attentions of local hunter and muscleman Gaston. When Maurice, Belle's father, sets out to bring his latest invention to a fair, he gets lost in the woods and finds the Beast's castle, where he is made the Beast's prisoner.
Belle is taken to the castle by her father's horse and offers to take the place of her father as the Beast's prisoner; and the Beast agrees and sends Maurice back. Maurice tries to tell people back in the town what has happened to Belle, but they think him insane, so decides to set off to get her back on his own.
Meanwhile, Belle and the Beast fall in love and the Beast becomes more human. When he gives her a magic mirror that will show her anything she wishes to see, she requests to see her father and sees him sick and dying. The Beast releases her to go rescue him, and she takes him back to their house in the village. However, Gaston arrives with a lynch mob to take Maurice to the asylum unless Belle agrees to marry him. Belle proves her father sane, by showing them the Beast with the magic mirror. However, Gaston convinces the mob that the Beast is a threat to the community and leads the mob to the castle. Most of the mob is fought away by the enchanted artifacts of the castle, but Gaston reaches the Beast and begans to fight with him, though the Beast dosen't fight back until Belle shows up. After Gaston is killed, Belle tells the Beast she loves him, and the spell is broken. The Beast turns into a handsome prince again and the enchanted artifacts of the castle are turned back into people.Plot summary