Kristen Bell's movie 'Frozen': Will it get a sequel?

Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel starred in the Disney animated film 'Frozen.' What's the next step for the hit movie? Kristen Bell also recently starred in the movie 'Veronica Mars.'

|
Disney/AP
Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel voice royal sisters, Anna and Elsa (pictured), in the movie 'Frozen.'

There’ve been three movies released under the Disney banner these past 3-4 years to gross more than $1 billion at the global box office (excluding Marvel Studios titles and Pixar films); Alice in Wonderland, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and Frozen. While the Mouse House is moving full speed ahead with an Alice sequel for 2016, followups to the other aforementioned titles are either slower-moving or non-existent (… at the moment, anyway).

Pirates of the Caribbean 5 – tentatively titled Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales – had originally been eyed for a Summer 2015 release, but ended up being delayed for additional development; more recently, the news emerged that the project hasn’t been green-lit yet. Jeff Nathanson (Tower Heist) is still working on the film’s script, though earlier this month producer Jerry Bruckheimer voiced his confidence that the screenplay could be in shooting shape in time for production to start by Fall 2014 (in order to make a Summer 2016 release).

Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn spoke at the Bloomberg Business of Entertainment Breakfast, where he spoke about upcoming projects such as the hotly-anticipated Star Wars: Episode VII. He was asked about Bruckheimer’s claim that Pirates 5 could being filming this fall, to which Horn replied (via THR):

“It’s possible. We haven’t seen a screenplay yet that I’ve been able to sign off on… There’s a lot of variables that effect the final outcome once it leaves the studio lot, so we are very careful.”

Bruckheimer ended his longtime first-look deal with Disney last year, so that may be part of the reason that Pirates 5 is progressing along slower than expected. Not to mention, Pirates franchise lead Johnny Depp’s last Disney genre blockbuster, The Lone Ranger, lost the studio a bundle and his expensive sci-fi thriller Transcendence is currently under-performing at the box office. Combine that with the fourth Pirates installment being the most critically-derided film in the series yet – diminishing the goodwill earned by previous chapters (okay, at least the first movie) – and Disney has all the more reason to be cautious about charging full-steam ahead on this project.

Frozen, on the other hand, is a film that the Mouse House is rapidly developing into a multi-platform franchise – just not one that includes additional movie installments, at this time. Horn, at the Bloomberg event, said that the Disney company is hard at work turning Frozen into a Broadway stage musical – following in the footsteps of previous hit Disney animated musicals like Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King – but that a film sequel “hadn’t even been discussed.”

The Oscar-winning Frozen makes sense as the basis for a stage musical; besides featuring a cast that includes major Broadway alum, the film’s narrative has a structure befitting a Broadway show – with its show-stopping tune, “Let It Go”, being very much a descendant of the Broadway school of music. As far as movie sequels go, arguably fellow animated feature Wreck-It Ralph creates a world that is ripe for further exploration – hence we’re happy knowing that Wreck-It Ralph 2 is in the works – far more than Frozen does (which seems perfectly fine as a self-contained story).

That said, Frozen still did earn over $1 billion in theaters around the globe, so it’s doubtful that most anyone will be surprised if a sequel conversation does, in fact, get started sometime down the line…

Sandy Schaefer blogs at Screen Rant.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Kristen Bell's movie 'Frozen': Will it get a sequel?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Culture-Cafe/2014/0508/Kristen-Bell-s-movie-Frozen-Will-it-get-a-sequel
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe