Beauty and the Beast was adapted for television's Shirley Temple's Storybook in 1958, with Claire Bloom and Charlton Heston in the title roles. Also featured were E.G. Marshall as Bloom's father and Barbara Baxley and June Lockhart as her sisters.

Make-up legend Jack P. Pierce ended his career with his work on a 1962 adaptation starring Mark Damon and Joyce Taylor. That version added palace intrigue with the prince's brother (Michael Pate) and sister-in-law (Merry Anders) plotting to seize the throne from the cursed hero.

For a 1976 television adaptation, George C. Scott played the Beast in makeup designed to resemble a wild boar. His wife, Trish Van Devere, played Belle, given the surname Beaumont in honor of the story's original author. Bernard Lee co-starred as her father, with Virginia McKenna and Patricia Quinn as her sisters.

A 1978 Czech version made the story more horrific, with Beauty's father left bankrupt after the Beast slaughters the traders carrying his goods through the Black Forest.

The X-rated British film Beauty (1981) offers a contemporary version of the story with Jamie Gillis as an evil businessman who agrees to save a gambler from ruin if one of his daughters will live with him for a year. Beauty (Loni Sanders), her sisters and the businessman engage in numerous sexual escapades before she decides Gillis is the only man who can satisfy her in bed.

The same year, Claire Bloom returned to the role of Beauty to voice the character in an animated short featuring Michael York as the Beast and James Earl Jones as narrator.

Singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks wrote her 1983 "Beauty and the Beast" based on her love of the film. She even obtained the rights to screen clips during her concerts while she performed the song.

Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre adapted the story in 1984, with Susan Sarandon as Beauty, Klaus Kinski as the Beast and Anjelica Huston as Sarandon's sister. Many sequences were directly modeled on the Jean Cocteau film.

John Savage and Rebecca De Mornay co-starred in a 1987 musical version. The U.S.-Israeli co-production was part of Cannon Films' Movie Tales series.

Better known is the cult television series that ran on CBS from 1987 to 1990. The contemporary adaptation followed the adventures of Vincent (Ron Perlman), a man-beast living in a secret world beneath New York City, and Catherine (Linda Hamilton), an assistant DA with whom he fights threats to the city and his underworld kingdom. When Hamilton left during the series' final year, Jo Anderson stepped in as the Beast's new love interest, a criminal profiler investigating Catherine's murder. In 2012, the CW debuted a new version of the series starring Kristin Kreuk and Jay Ryan.

Walt Disney Pictures produced their own version of the story in 1991. The major hit featured the voices of Paige O'Hara and Robby Benson in the leads, along with Angela Lansbury and Jerry Orbach. The film won Oscars® for Alan Menken's score and the title song and became the first animated feature nominated for Best Picture. Although there was little mention of Cocteau's film in the film's publicity, some critics pointed out the film's use of living furniture may have been inspired by the human statues and candelabra in the earlier picture. The Disney film inspired the syndicated series Sing Me a Story with Belle, two direct-to-video animated features, a long-running 1994 Broadway adaptation, an ice show and a television version of that show.

Francis Ford Coppola has cited Cocteau's film as an influence on several scenes in his 1992 version of Dracula.

In 1994, Phillip Glass composed an opera not only based on Beauty and the Beast but designed to be performed as the film screened silently. The opera's libretto consists of the film's dialogue timed to the actor's lip movements. After several concert performances, the piece was recorded on a two CD set that can be played along with the film. Criterion's second DVD version of the film includes the opera as an alternate soundtrack. Mezzo-soprano Janice Felty sings Belle.

Director Mike Nichols's 2004 HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner's Angels in America includes references to Beauty and the Beast in a dream sequence featuring moving candlesticks and statues. During the dream, one of the characters is shown reading a biography of Cocteau. The same year, Cocteau's depiction of candles held by arms was also copied in the film version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera The Phantom of the Opera.

In 2011, Alex Pettyfer starred as an arrogant contemporary teen turned ugly by a witch's curse until he can find true love. Singer-actress Vanessa Hudgens co-stars in the Beauty role, with Neil Patrick Harris, Peter Krause and LisaGay Hamilton in the supporting cast.

A new French version of the story starring Vincent Cassel as the Beast and Lea Seydoux as Beauty is slated for a 2014 release.

By Frank Miller