Disney’s Sleeping Beauty was released in 1959.
The animated film premiered at the Fox Wilshire Theatre in Los Angeles on January 29, 1959, and was distributed by Buena Vista Film Distribution. It was Disney’s sixteenth animated feature and adapted Charles Perrault’s 1697 fairy tale about Princess Aurora, the curse of Maleficent, and the kiss that awakens her.
Sleeping Beauty was an unusually ambitious production. Development began in 1950, and the film took almost a decade to complete. Its reported budget of $6 million made it Disney’s most expensive animated feature at the time. Artist Eyvind Earle created its distinctive, tapestry-like visual style, while George Bruns adapted music from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty ballet.
The film’s initial box-office performance was disappointing, but later theatrical re-releases helped it become a classic. It was also notable technically: it used the Super Technirama 70 widescreen process. In 2019, the Library of Congress selected Sleeping Beauty for preservation in the National Film Registry.