One of the animators behind Disney’s latest hit Encanto reveals the Madrigal family’s opening song was inspired by Beauty and the Beast. As the 60th animated film to be released by Walt Disney Animation Studios, Encanto arrived in November with a certain level of expectations attached. The film’s original and magical story harkened back to classic Disney in many ways, and audiences took to it with much enthusiasm. Encanto, which follows young Mirabel Madrigal as she works to preserve her family’s magic despite being the only member without powers of her own, received positive reviews upon its release and has become a viral sensation after streaming on Disney+.

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Like all good Disney movies, Encanto‘s story really gets started with the aid of an exuberant musical number. The first song off the film’s soundtrack is “The Family Madrigal,” a rapid-fire introduction to each member of the titular family. Through Lin-Manuel Miranda’s clever lyrics, Mirabel rattles off the names of the various Madrigals, as well as their particular gifts. As she does so, she bounces through her little village, allowing audiences to see all the people who live around the Madrigal casita.

If “The Family Madrigal” reminded viewers of another Disney opening song, that might’ve been intentional. Disney animator Greg Verreault shared a little peek at some of the shots from the Encanto song and their reference images in a social media post. At the same time, he revealed Miranda had mentioned “The Family Madrigal” was inspired by Beauty and the Beast‘s opening song “Belle,” which also features a lot of townspeople interjecting at various moments. You can see the comparison shots down below.

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Miranda has long been a major Disney fan and has already worked with the studio on numerous projects. For Encanto, it sounds like he took his Disney knowledge and applied it to some of the key musical moments of the film. At the same time, he also managed to make Encanto‘s music stand on its own and created one of the most popular Disney songs in recent memory: The much-parodied and streamed “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”.

“The Family Madrigal” is a very different song, yet it establishes the tone of Encanto early on and plunges audiences right into the titular family unit. Some of the best songs from musicals both push the plot forward and reveal key details about the characters, and Encanto‘s opener definitely manages to do that. It’s fitting that it was inspired by a Disney classic, since now Encanto is becoming a modern day classic of its own. Clearly, this is a movie that learned from the best.

Source: Greg Verreault/Twitter

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Rachel Labonte
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Rachel LaBonte is a news, feature, and movie review writer for Screen Rant with a deep passion for film and television. A graduate of Emerson College, she majored in Media Arts Production while specializing in screenwriting. She’s been a writer ever since high school when she realized she was rather good at it and joined as many entertainment news clubs as she could while in school. Most notably, she wrote for Emerson’s website Emertainment Monthly, and one of her film reviews won an Evvy (Emerson’s student awards) for Best Review. Her deep love of movies led to her working at a movie theater for five years, which she loved despite the angry customers. An avid reader who constantly buys books before reading the ones she already owns, Rachel is a huge fan of superheroes (especially of the Marvel variety) and wizards and will likely never be able to catch up on all the movies/TV shows she longs to watch.

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