Sleeping Beauty is a 1959 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the fairy tale "La Belle au bois dormant" by Charles Perrault. The 16th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, it was released to theatres on January 29, 1959 by Buena Vista Distribution, and is the last fairy tale produced by Walt Disney due to its initial box office disappointment; the studio did not return to the genre until well after Disney's death with the release of The Little Mermaid.