Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast (French: La Belle et la Bête) is a traditional fairy tale written by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740 in La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins. Her lengthy version was abridged, rewritten, and published by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756 in Magasin des enfants to produce the version most commonly retold.

Variants of the tale are known across Europe. In France, for example, Zémire et Azor is an operatic version of the story, written by Marmontel and composed by Grétry in 1771, which had enormous success well into the 19th century; it is based on the second version of the tale. Amour pour amour, by Nivelle de la Chaussée, is a 1742 play based on Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve's version. According to researchers at universities in Durham and Lisbon, the story originated around 4,000 years ago.

Plot

Belle

Belle may refer to:

People

Places

Businesses

Disney Princess

Disney Princess is a media franchise owned by The Walt Disney Company. Created by Disney Consumer Products chairman Andy Mooney in the early 2000s, the franchise features a line-up of fictional female protagonists who have appeared in various Disney franchises.

The franchise does not, as its name might suggest, include all princess characters from the whole of Disney-owned media, but rather refers to specific characters from the company's animated films. As of 2015 the eleven characters considered part of the franchise are Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel and Merida. The franchise has released dolls, sing-along videos, apparel, home decor, toys and a variety of other products featuring the Disney Princesses.

History and conception

"Standing in line in the arena [of a Disney on Ice show], I was surrounded by little girls dressed head to toe as princesses...They weren’t even Disney products. They were generic princess products they’d appended to a Halloween costume. And the light bulb went off. Clearly there was latent demand here. So the next morning I said to my team, "'O.K., let’s establish standards and a color palette and talk to licensees and get as much product out there as we possibly can that allows these girls to do what they’re doing anyway: projecting themselves into the characters from the classic movies.'"

The Walt Disney Company

The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney, is an American diversifiedmultinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. It is the world's second largest media conglomerate in terms of revenue, after Comcast. Disney was founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, and established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into live-action film production, television, and theme parks. The company also operated under the names The Walt Disney Studio, then Walt Disney Productions. Taking on its current name in 1986, it expanded its existing operations and also started divisions focused upon theater, radio, music, publishing, and online media.

In addition, Disney has since created corporate divisions in order to market more mature content than is typically associated with its flagship family-oriented brands. The company is best known for the products of its film studio, The Walt Disney Studios, which is today one of the largest and best-known studios in American cinema. Disney also owns and operates the ABC broadcast television network; cable television networks such as Disney Channel, ESPN, A+E Networks, and ABC Family; publishing, merchandising, music, and theatre divisions; and owns and licenses 14 theme parks around the world. The company has been a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since May 6, 1991. An early and well-known cartoon creation of the company, Mickey Mouse, is a primary symbol of The Walt Disney Company.

Disney Junior

Disney Junior is an American digital cable and satellite television network that is owned by the Disney Channels Worldwide unit of the Disney–ABC Television Group, itself a unit of the Disney Media Networks division of The Walt Disney Company. Aimed mainly at children under 8 years of age, its programming consists of original first-run television series, theatrically-released and made-for-DVD movies and select other third-party programming.

Disney Junior also lends its name to a morning and early afternoon program block seen on sister network Disney Channel, branded as "Disney Junior on Disney Channel", airing weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. (6:00 to 10:30 a.m. during the summer months and designated school break periods) and weekends from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. Eastern and Pacific Time.

As of February 2015, Disney Junior is available to approximately 74,972,000 households (64.4% of those with television) in the United States.

History

Origins

The Walt Disney Company first attempted to launch a 24-hour cable channel for preschoolers in the United States, when the company announced plans to launch the Playhouse Disney Channel, a television offshoot of Disney Channel's daytime programming block Playhouse Disney, which debuted on the channel on May 8, 1997 (airing during the morning hours seven days a week, with the Monday through Friday blocks lasting until the early afternoon). Plans for the United States network were ultimately shelved, however dedicated Playhouse Disney Channels were launched in other countries internationally.