Frozen 2 Announced by Disney

Well that didn’t take long. Literally just days afterFrozen directors Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck said that Frozen 2 was not yet in production for them, and a day before “Frozen Fever” is due to hit theaters, The Walt Disney Company has announced that yes indeed, Frozen 2 is coming down the hopefully winterized pipe.

While no release date is yet announced, this is par for the course with what is to date the highest grossing animated film of all time. Indeed, we have written extensively about why Frozen’s $1 billion gross has been a wonderful thing for Hollywood filmmaking.

The project will reunite Lee and Buck as directors, and at the very least we can assume Josh Gad’s Olaf will be back since he joined John Lasseter and Disney CEO Bob Iger for the announcement.

“We enjoyed making ‘Frozen Fever’ so much and being back in that world with those characters,” said Lasseter, the chief creative officer of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios. “Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck have come up with a great idea for a sequel, and you will be hearing a lot more about it, and we’re taking you back to Arendelle. We are so excited about that.”

Lasseter made the announcement at a shareholders meeting for Disney. And while he did not name the rest of the creative team individually, it is probably a safe assumption to think that Idina Menzel, who voices Queen Elsa, Kristen Bell as Princess Anna, and Jonathan Groff as Kristoff, will also be back. After all, they returned for “Frozen Fever,” and Menzel already let slip that Frozen 2 might have been secretly in production last year when she said that she’s just “along for the ride” on the film.

Also likely to return are Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, the composers of Frozen’s songbook, which won them an Oscar for “Let It Go.” They also wrote a new song for tomorrow’s “Frozen Fever.”

This will mark only the second time that Walt Disney Animation Studios has made an official sequel to one of their films, the other was the less remembered 1990 feature The Rescuers Down Under. While Disney has churned out plenty of straight-to-video sequels to animated classics, WDAS has always been reluctant to return to the well. But in a world where Frozen can gross $1.2 billion worldwide, things have changed. Besides, Lasseter and Pixar’s Ed Catmull have previously overseen at Pixar well received sequels to Toy Story, which hopefully indicates that we’re in for more frosty treats from Arendelle.

“Frozen Fever” opens Friday in front of Disney’s live-action Cinderella remake.

Variety