‘There’s been talk of Stockholm syndrome with the Beast, but Belle changes him’Disney hired me to write a Winnie the Pooh spec that was never made. But chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg read it, and asked me to start working on Beauty and the Beast. There had been two previous unsuccessful attempts to adapt it, in the 1930s and 50s; my first draft wasn’t a musical, was visually darker, and there were no talking objects.