<Li> Frank Welker as Sultan--The castle's pet dog turned into a footstool . </Li> <P> After the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, Walt Disney sought out other stories to adapt into feature films, with Beauty and the Beast being among the stories he considered . Attempts to develop the Beauty and the Beast story into a film were made in the 1930s and 1950s, but were ultimately given up because it "proved to be a challenge" for the story team . Peter M. Nichols states Disney may later have been discouraged by Jean Cocteau having already done his 1946 version . </P> <P> Decades later, during the production of Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1987, the Disney studio resurrected Beauty and the Beast as a project for the satellite animation studio it had set up in London, England to work on Roger Rabbit . Richard Williams, who had directed the animated portions of Roger Rabbit, was approached to direct but declined in favor of continuing work on his long - gestating project The Thief and the Cobbler . In his place, Williams recommended his colleague, English animation director Richard Purdum, and work began under producer Don Hahn on a non-musical version of Beauty and the Beast set in 19th - century France . At the behest of Disney CEO Michael Eisner, Beauty and the Beast became the first Disney animated film to use a screenwriter . This was an unusual production move for an animated film, which is traditionally developed on storyboards rather than in scripted form . Linda Woolverton wrote the original draft of the story before storyboarding began, and worked with the story team to retool and develop the film . </P> <P> Upon seeing the initial storyboard reels in 1989, Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg ordered that the film be scrapped and started over from scratch . A few months after starting anew, Purdum resigned as director . The studio had approached Ron Clements and John Musker to direct the film, but they turned down the offer, saying they were "tired" after just having finished directing Disney's recent success The Little Mermaid . Disney then hired first - time feature directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale . Wise and Trousdale had previously directed the animated sections of Cranium Command, a short film for a Disney EPCOT theme park attraction . In addition, Katzenberg asked songwriters Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, who had written the song score for The Little Mermaid, to turn Beauty and the Beast into a Broadway - style musical film in the same vein as Mermaid . Ashman, who at the time had learned he was dying of complications from AIDS, had been working with Disney on a pet project of his, Aladdin, and only reluctantly agreed to join the struggling production team . To accommodate Ashman's failing health, pre-production of Beauty and the Beast was moved from London to the Residence Inn in Fishkill, New York, close to Ashman's New York City home . Here, Ashman and Menken joined Wise, Trousdale, Hahn, and Woolverton in retooling the film's script . Since the original story had only two major characters, the filmmakers enhanced them, added new characters in the form of enchanted household items who "add warmth and comedy to a gloomy story" and guide the audience through the film, and added a "real villain" in the form of Gaston . </P>

Where did beauty and the beast take place