Originally published March 10, 2015. Updated April 15, 2018.
Despite being the biggest animated film of all time, with a worldwide gross of over $1.27 billion, the directors of Frozen were holding their cards close to their chest when word about a possible sequel was brought up during an interview with BuzzFeed to promote the new Frozen short, Frozen Fever.
“It’s been in the press that we are doing it, and we would ask each other, ‘Are we?’” said co-director Chris Buck said. “They’d have a date and they’d have a cast and it was like, OK…”
His partner in crime, Jennifer Lee continued: “It all comes down to the story. “ike with the short, it was so daunting until we found the story. Then it was all of the things it usually is and we were thinking of every emotion and moment and feeling. I think that’s all we can do. Until we find our way into what’s next, emotionally, it will feel too big. We just finished the short two weeks ago. One year ago, it was a lot to even think about doing a short. We were quite tired. We don’t really know what it’s like to stop for a minute and think about what we want to do next.”
“There is a bit of that drop-the-mic thing,” Buck suggested. “Just go, [drops mic] ‘I don’t know what else to do.’”
While many Disney properties have had sequels over the years, it has only really been the Pixar-produced Toy Story franchise that has been a runaway success, with the majority of the hit films sequels going straight to DVD (see Aladdin: The Return of Jafar, The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride and Mulan II as examples).
But when you have such high grosses and make such a huge impact on popular culture, sequel talk will never go away. Will we see a sequel? Who knows, but for now fans can enjoy the new short which debuts in front of Disney’s live-action remake of Cinderella, directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Lily James and Cate Blanchett, when it opens on March 27th.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ONsp_bmDYXc
