The groundbreaking ballroom scene is back with Disney's re-release of Beauty and the Beast. All images © Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.

In 1991, Beauty and the Beast hit theaters, spurring the late film critic Gene Siskel to comment, "The musical has been basically dead for the last 20 years in American film; this one brings it back alive." The picture, the first to go through a completely digital pipeline, was the follow-up to The Little Mermaid, which had given Disney's animated features a resurgence. But the landmark Beauty would give the legendary studio a critical success in addition to a monetary one. The next year, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences honored the $351 million worldwide blockbuster with a best picture Oscar nomination; the first given to an animated film. Now, in celebration of its 10th anniversary, Disney has decided to re-release the film, with a new musical number, in the giant 65mm format.

Changing A Classic?
The first question is: why add something to a film that's already considered a classic? When asked this question, producer Don Hahn explains, "The ['Human Again'] song was also meant to be in the film. We just couldn't figure out how to make it work and not take away from the central story of Belle." During the original production, the 11-minute sequence was storyboarded and songwriters Howard Ashman and Alan Menken had recorded a demo version of the music. Even though a favorite of the filmmakers and songwriters, the song was finally replaced by the shorter "Something There." However, in 1994 when Alan Menken took Beauty and the Beast to Broadway, he discovered a way to work the show-stopping tune into the stage musical.

Hahn recalls, "About four years ago, [directors] Kirk [Wise] and Gary [Trousdale] and I were sitting around talking about the Star Wars Special Edition that had just come out and Kirk jokingly suggested, 'Wouldn't it be fun to do a special edition of Beauty with 'Human Again' or new material in it?' When the head of Feature Animation said he thought it was a great idea, we stopped joking and began thinking about how we could actually do it. We had storyboarded the sequence for the original production, but completely reworked it for this special edition of the film. We discovered that there was a perfect place for the song following 'Something There' and it added a greater emotional depth to the story. A new scene with Cogsworth instructing the staff to create the most romantic atmosphere known to man or beast sets up the song beautifully."