Wikipedia Contributors. “Beauty and the Beast” Wikimedia Foundation, last modified February 11, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Beast.

Retelling “Beauty and the Beast” as a road-trip story.

Belle has never left her hometown in the rural American South. The Beast is confined to a junkyard on the edge of town by the townspeople’s fear and the county sheriff’s hatred. When Belle’s brother Maurice steals something from the Beast’s junkyard, Belle offers to drive the Beast to the other side of the country in exchange for Maurice’s freedom. Belle and the Beast’s relationship starts off tense, and Belle briefly leaves him on the side of the highway, but she comes back for him. They start to bond, and Belle mods her truck so the Beast can drive it with his cursed body. 

When Maurice gets arrested again, the Beast lets Belle go back to her hometown to help, leaving him alone and hundreds of miles away from her. His love for Belle drives him to re-create her mods on a new truck and drive it back to where their journey began. He arrives just in time to help Belle defeat the sheriff. Belle, moved by his selflessness, confesses her love to him. The townspeople who trust her accept him as part of the community. The Beast’s curse is broken. They Live Happily Ever After.

Belle doesn’t have to be a Southern American: she can be from anywhere with a strong car-modding and road-trip culture.

Belle doesn’t have to be a woman, and the Beast doesn’t have to be a man.

Maurice was a class troublemaker when he and Belle were kids, but now that they’re adults, he’s become a chronic petty thief and vandal. Belle does her best to keep him out of trouble and clean up his messes, but every time she helps him, he acts more reckless, destructive, and entitled to her support.

Belle is restless in her hometown and curious about the outside world, but she feels obligated to stay close to her family because they could need her help at any moment.

The county sheriff in Belle and Maurice’s hometown personally hates both Maurice and the Beast. When Maurice trespasses on the Beast’s land and steals something from him, the sheriff finally has a chance to send him to a state prison.

Belle is called to the police station when Maurice is arrested. She meets the reclusive Beast for the first time and learns that he’s been desperate to leave the town for years. She realizes that he can’t leave, despite his junkyard full of cars and car parts, because he can’t drive a car with his cursed body. She makes a deal with the sheriff: he’ll drop the charges against Maurice, and she’ll take the Beast somewhere far away.

Belle offers to take the Beast anywhere he wants to go. Knowing that building a relationship with her could be his last chance to break his curse, he chooses the farthest destination he can think of and improvises a story about an extended family waiting for him there.

Initially, the Beast acts like he’s entitled to Belle’s help. He realizes he needs her when she leaves him on the side of the road, and he forces himself to act more humbly after she comes back for him. As he spends more time with her, his grudging politeness grows into a deep, genuine respect.

When Belle meets the Beast, she’s frightened by his appearance. Her worst suspicions are confirmed when he gleefully encourages the sheriff to send Maurice to prison. She realizes that the Beast is as human as she is as they travel together, and it’s easy for her to treat him as her friend after he apologizes for how he treated her and Maurice.

The Beast doesn’t want the road trip to end before Belle breaks his curse; Belle doesn’t want the trip to end because she doesn’t want to lose her excuse for exploring the world outside her hometown.

The first time Belle leaves the Beast behind, her desire to reunite him with his family drives her to come back for him. As she asks him more questions about his supposed family, he makes up more and more elaborate stories about them, and he learns two things: first, telling her about his “family” encourages her to treat him more sympathetically and tell her about her own life, bringing them closer, and second, talking to her about them lets him live in a fantasy where he has an ideal, loving family who misses him and doesn’t care about his curse. When Maurice is arrested again, she’s torn between going back to help him and finishing her journey with the Beast. At first, she decides to drive the Beast the rest of the way to his destination, then turn around and go back to her hometown. The Beast can only convince her to go straight back to Maurice by coming clean: he tells her that he has no family waiting for him, and he chose their destination at random.

The Beast’s design could be based on a cryptid from the area where Belle lives. He could be a not-deer: from a distance, he looks like a deer; when you get closer, you realize he isn’t a deer; when he stands up on his hind legs, you realize he never was.

Alternatively, the Beast’s design could be based on Garfield.