Black Beauty is a 1994 family drama film, written and directed by Caroline Thompson in her directorial debut. The fifth cinematic adaptation of Anna Sewell's 1877 novel of the same name, the film stars Andrew Knott, who, the year prior, had played Dicken in The Secret Garden (another of Caroline Thompson’s film credits, as screenwriter), as well as Sean Bean, David Thewlis and Alan Cumming as 'Black Beauty'. Produced and distributed by Warner Bros., under their Warner Bros. Family Entertainment label, the film’s story is told as an autobiography of the horse Black Beauty (as in the novel), with Cumming’s voiceover narration as ‘Beauty’ leading viewers through the trials of the horse’s life, through his own eyes.