A selfish and unkind prince hosting a ball is visited in his castle by an enchantress disguised as an old beggar woman, who offers him an enchanted rose in exchange for shelter from a storm.

Several years later in a nearby village, Belle, the bookworm daughter of widowed artist Maurice, dreams of adventure while constantly rejecting advances from Gaston, an arrogant hunter and war veteran.

Belle meets the castle's servants, including candelabra Lumière, mantel clock Cogsworth, feather-duster Plumette, teapot Mrs. Potts, and her son Chip, a teacup.

As Belle tearfully professes her love to him, Agathe reveals herself as the enchantress and undoes the curse, restoring the Beast and his servants to their human forms along with the villagers' memories.

Jimmy Johnston, Dean Street, and Alexis Loizon appear as Tom, Dick, and Stanley, a trio of men who are friends with Gaston and LeFou and serve as the former's henchmen.

[11] She was the first and only choice of Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan F. Horn, who had previously run Warner Bros. which released the eight Harry Potter films that starred Watson as Hermione Granger.

[41] The rest of the principal cast, including Josh Gad, Emma Thompson, Kevin Kline, Audra McDonald, Ian McKellen, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ewan McGregor, and Stanley Tucci were announced between March and April to play LeFou, Mrs. Potts, Maurice, Madame de Garderobe, Cogsworth, Plumette, Lumière, and Cadenza, respectively.

[49] The Beast was portrayed with a "more traditional motion capture puppeteering for the body and the physical orientation", where actor Dan Stevens was "in a forty-pound gray suit on stilts for much of the film".

[50] Prior to the film's release, Bill Condon refilmed one certain sequence in the "Days in the Sun" number, due to confusion among test audiences caused by actress Harriet Jones, who looked similar to Hattie Morahan, who portrayed Agathe.

[24] When released in 1991, Beauty and the Beast marked a turning point for Walt Disney Pictures by appealing to millions of fans with its Academy Award-winning musical score by lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken.

[61][62] Grande and Legend's updated version of the title song is faithful to the original, Grammy-winning duet, performed by Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson for the 1991 Disney film.

[63] Disney debuted the music video for Ariana Grande and John Legend's interpretation of the title song on Freeform television network on March 5, 2017, and it has since been viewed over 250 million times on the Vevo video-hosting service.

[90] Beauty and the Beast was released on 4K Blu-ray and on Digital Movie Copy 4K ULTRA HD Streamable Version Downloadable Format on March 10, 2020, concurrently along with the original animated feature film.

[109] Deadline Hollywood calculated the film's net profit as $414.7 million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participations, and other costs; box office grosses and home media revenues placed it second on their list of 2017's "Most Valuable Blockbusters".

[122] Unlike all previous four Disney live-action films witnessing a hike on their second day, Saturday, Beauty and the Beast actually fell 2%, nevertheless, the dip was paltry, and the grosses are so much greater in comparison to the other titles.

[170] Although China has occasionally blocked gay-themed content from streaming video services, in this case, Chinese censors decided to leave the gay scene intact.

According to local box office tracker Ent Group, the film grossed an estimated $12.1 million on its opening day (Friday), representing 70% of the total receipts.

[152] It topped the box office for four straight weekends in Germany, Korea, Austria, Finland, Poland, Portugal, Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Switzerland and the UK (exclusive of previews).

[189][190] Leslie Felperin of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "It's a Michelin-triple-starred master class in patisserie skills that transforms the cinematic equivalent of a sugar rush into a kind of crystal-meth-like narcotic high that lasts about two hours."

"[193] However, The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday gave Watson's performance a mixed review, describing it as "alert and solemn" while deeming her singing abilities "serviceable enough to get the job done".

He also commented on the advantage of its using both motion capture and CGI technology, writing: "Almost overwhelmingly lavish, beautifully staged and performed with exquisite timing and grace by the outstanding cast".

[199] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone rated the film three out of four, deeming it an "exhilarating gift" while he remarked that "Beauty and the Beast does justice to Disney's animated classic, even if some of the magic is M.I.A (Missing in Action)".

[200] Stephanie Zacharek of Time magazine gave a positive review with a description as "Wild, Vivid and Crazy-Beautiful" as she wrote "Nearly everything about Beauty and the Beast is larger than life, to the point that watching it can be a little overwhelming."

[203] Mark Hughes of Forbes also praised the film, which he wrote "could revive the story in a faithful but entirely new and unique way elevating the material beyond expectations, establishing itself as a cinematic equal to the original".

David Sims of The Atlantic wrote that the 2017 film "feels particularly egregious, in part, because it's so slavishly devoted to the original; every time it falls short of its predecessor (which is quite often), it's hard not to notice".

[206] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that the film was "lit in that fascinatingly artificial honey-glow light, and it runs smoothly on rails—the kind of rails that bring in and out the stage sets for the lucrative Broadway touring version."

[209] Dana Schwartz of The New York Observer felt that some of the characters, such as Gaston and the Beast, had been watered down from the 1991 film, and that the additional backstory elements failed to "advance the plot or theme in any meaningful way" while adding considerable bloat.

[266] As was the case with the original animated film, one argument is that Belle has Stockholm syndrome (a condition that causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors as a survival strategy during captivity).

Before signing on to the film, Emma Watson did study whether Belle is trapped in an abusive relationship with the Beast and concluded that she does not think the criticism fits this version of the fairy tale.

[271][272] Following this viewpoint, Constance Grady of Vox stated that Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's Beauty and the Beast was a fairy tale originally written to prepare young girls in eighteenth-century France for arranged marriages, and that the power disparity is amplified in the Disney version.