Six things we bet you didn't know about 'Beauty and the Beast'

Walt Disney considered remaking the fairy tale in the 1930s. But while he was pondering ' Beauty and the Beast', a live action version of the movie was released by French filmmaker Jean Cocteau. Disney later tabled the idea.

Belle was the second Disney princess to not be of royal descent, after Cinderella. Tiana is the third. In the movie, Belle is the only person in her village who wears blue, which is meant to symbolise how different she is from everyone else.

Animator Glen Keane based the Beast’s appearance on several animals, drawing inspiration from the mane of a lion, head of a buffalo, brow of a gorilla, tusks of a wild boar, legs and tail of a wolf, and the body of a bear.

It was the second Disney film produced (and "first prestige film") to use CAPS (Computer Animation Production System), a software developed for Disney by Pixar.

In the late ’80s, Disney hired British animator Roger Purdum to direct a nonmusical version of 'Beauty and the Beast', with Linda Woolverton writing the script. But the company wasn’t happy with the result of 10 weeks of storyboarding — the story was too dark and depressing.

It was the first animated film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. It lost to 'Silence of the Lambs'.