With the 30th Anniversary of Disney’s 1991 classic Beauty and the Beast, you are bound to see and hear a lot about the film in terms of merchandise and videos. But the classic film with some of Disney’s best songs, visuals, characters and story may have turned out completely different. 

The film began development in 1989 in London. After the success of Who Framed Rodger Rabbit animation director Richard Williams was approached to direct, but turned it down in favor of finishing his own project The Thief and the Cobbler. Williams recommended a colleague of his, Richard Purdum to direct, and he, along with his wife Jill and producer Don Hahn, put together a story reel of a non-musical version of Beauty and the Beast which was actually a lot closer to the original fairy tale it was based on.

Instead of Belle and her father being regular citizens in a small town, Belle’s father was an aristocrat with a number of trade ships. Her father raised her and her sister Clarice as well having their antagonistic aunt Marguerite who moves in with them. But when the trade ships were lost in a storm the four were forced to move into a small house. As Belle’s father tries to find ways to pay off their debt aunt Marguerite tries to have Belle married off to a rich aristocrat named Gaston. Belle’s father gets lost and finds himself at a castle where inanimate objects come to life and serve him, though they have no faces. The beast also resembled a Baboon versus the Bear-like creature we eventually had. This version of the film tried to be less like the classic Disney films and more of a straight forward re-telling.

After Jeffery Katzenburg was dissatisfied with the film reel he immediately ordered an extensive rewrite as well as mandating musical numbers be added to recreate the success of 1989’s The Little Mermaid. Months later Richard Purdum resigned as director, due to creative differences, and the duo of Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise took over directing the film. This became the version Disney released.

Seeing this alternate version of the story is very interesting, it goes to show you how different a film can start out as versus when it is finished. Many other Disney films such as Lady and the Tramp and The Emperor’s New Groove had vastly different versions before their final cut, it’s all part of the creative process. 

What do you think? Were they right to scrap this early version?