Frozen II

In March 2014, when asked about sequels to the first film, producer Peter Del Vecho said that Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, and he "work very, very well together, so I believe we will be developing a new project. But I don't know what that is right now."[21] In late April of that year, Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan F. Horn stated that a sequel was not being seriously considered because at that time the studio's priority was the planned Broadway musical, which also required additional songs to be written by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez.[22][23]

When asked in May 2014 about a sequel, Disney CEO Bob Iger told host David Faber that Disney would not "mandate a sequel" or "force storytelling", because to do so would risk creating something not as good as the first film. Iger also expressed the hope that the Frozen franchise "is something that is kind of forever for the company" similar to The Lion King.[24]

In June, Lee confirmed that then-chief creative officer John Lasseter had expressly granted her and Buck the freedom to explore whatever they were "passionate about": "We don't know what it is yet ... We're actually going to start from scratch. It'll be something completely brand new."[25] Years later, Lee and Buck revealed that they really had begun development of an entirely new film unrelated to Frozen.[26] But during the fall of 2014, while working on the short film Frozen Fever, they realized how much they missed the characters.[26] In the meantime, Del Vecho had been accepting speaking engagements around the world, where fans peppered him with questions left unanswered by the first film.[26] In November 2014, Lee, Buck, and Del Vecho agreed they were not yet ready to leave behind the world of Arendelle, and began to discuss the possibility of a sequel.[26] Buck later explained: "The one thing that we did right away was to figure out what would be satisfying for Anna and Elsa at the end of the movie."[27] They soon arrived at the ending they would spend the next five years trying to "earn": Anna would become queen and Elsa would be free.[26]

On March 12, 2015, at Disney's annual meeting of shareholders in San Francisco, Iger, Lasseter, and actor Josh Gad (the voice of Olaf) officially announced a full-length sequel, Frozen 2, was in development at Disney, with Buck and Lee returning as directors and Del Vecho returning as producer.[28] Lasseter said that at Disney Animation, "as with Pixar, when we do a sequel, it is because the filmmakers who created the original have created an idea that is so good that it's worthy of these characters." He said that in the case of Frozen, the directors had "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."[29] According to the Los Angeles Times, there was "considerable internal debate" at Disney over whether to proceed with a Frozen sequel at Disney Animation, but the unprecedented success of the first film apparently swayed Disney executives towards making a sequel.[30]

In a September 2017 interview with The Arizona Republic, Menzel confirmed that she would return for her role a couple weeks after completing her concert tour; she said, "they haven't even sent me a script".[31]

On September 28, Gad announced his role in the sequel with Buck, Lee, Del Vecho and Lasseter.[32][33]

Jonathan Groff (the voice of Kristoff) said earlier in July 2017, "I don't know anything about it yet other than I'm about to start recording my section of it."[34] On October 11, he confirmed on the British talk show Lorraine that he too had started recording for the sequel the previous month.[35][36][37]

In an October 2017 interview with CinemaBlend, Bell said that there will be some new characters too. She further said that the directors and the producers had "taken their trip to Norway" and took "the entire culture in" to make this "fun home movie." She added that Lee had drafted personal journals in character as Elsa and Anna "for months to try and figure out [what they'd say]".[38] From the Scandinavia research trip, the production team derived the important insight (as paraphrased by Animation Magazine) that "Elsa is very clearly a mythic hero who takes on the world and the world’s problems with supernatural powers, while Anna is a fairytale hero who is human and lives in a world that’s surrounded by magic, but she doesn’t possess magic herself."[39] They also realized that what makes the original Frozen so powerful is how it combines these two different types of stories.[39]

In March 2018, Lee said in an interview that she was doing the second draft out of six drafts, which she referred as "six screenings".[40] In July 2018, it was announced that Evan Rachel Wood and Sterling K. Brown had entered talks to join the cast in undisclosed roles.[41] In August 2018, Allison Schroeder, the screenwriter of Hidden Figures and Disney's Christopher Robin, was hired to assist Lee with writing the film's screenplay after Lee succeeded Lasseter as Disney Animation's chief creative officer.[42] Lee was credited as screenwriter. Schroeder was credited with additional screenplay material.[1]

Meanwhile, Megan Harding, who had previously directed a 2014 making-of ABC television special about Frozen, reached out to Disney Animation about whether she could document the production of Frozen II.[43] While working on the television special, both Harding[43] and Del Vecho[44] had wished that cameras had been there a year earlier to document the production of Frozen (rather than interviewing people talking about the process after the fact). Harding began to travel regularly from her base in New York City to Burbank with camera crews in tow, and ended up shooting 1,300 hours of footage on 115 shooting days from December 2018 through the November 2019 world premiere.[45] According to Harding, Disney Animation provided full cooperation knowing she intended to take a "fearless" and "honest look" at its filmmaking process; her crew was asked to leave the room only once, and that moment (and the reason why) ended up in her documentary.[43] Harding's documentary would later reveal that by December 2018, it had already been firmly established that Elsa was following a mysterious voice, but the production team had not yet resolved the critical question of the identity of The Voice.[46]

The first presentation of completed scenes from the movie was shown at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in June 2019.[47] At the Annecy presentation, head of animation Becky Bresee and head of effects animation Marlon West said that as of mid-June 2019, the film was "still in production, with seven weeks of animation to be completed and 10 weeks of special effects."[48]

At the 2019 D23 Expo, the directors said that the sequel will answer the questions that were left open by the original film; "Why does Elsa have magical powers", "Why was Anna born without powers", "Where were their parents going when their ship sank", and more will be addressed.[49][50] It was announced that Brown's role is a soldier in the Arendelle army who worked for Elsa and Anna's grandfather King Runeard,[17] and Wood announced that her role would be shown in flashback and that it would help "uncover some mysteries that we didn't know before".[51]

Throughout the production of the film, filmmakers collaborated with Sámi experts on the depiction of the fictional Northuldra tribe. An advisory group, Verdett, was formed. This collaboration was the result of an agreement between The Walt Disney Company, the transnational Saami Council, and the Sámi parliaments of Finland, Norway and Sweden.[52]

Additionally, while some fans campaigned for Elsa to receive a female love interest in the film, Anderson-Lopez confirmed that Elsa will have no love interest in the movie.[53] Lee later explained to Maureen Dowd that they had put the characters through Myers-Briggs tests, and "[i]t really came out that Elsa is not ready for a relationship."[54]

During a press conference for the film, Lee confirmed that the sequel would not feature elements from Once Upon a Time's Frozen storyline, since she had "made a point of certain things not to see" while developing the film.[55]

The film was produced by a team of approximately 800 people, of whom 80 were animators.[56] Tony Smeed and Becky Bresee together served as the heads of animation on the film.[39] Hyun-Min Lee served as animation supervisor for Anna, while Wayne Unten again served as animation supervisor for Elsa.[57]

Before animation began, Unten showed various scenes of superheroes like Frozone to the animators working on Elsa as examples of what not to emulate.[57] Elsa's movements in the sequel were modeled after her graceful movements in the first film, and also drew inspiration from modern dance, especially the work of Martha Graham.[57]

According to co-production designer Lisa Keene, the animators did "a lot of artwork" in order to define the Nøkk design, while Steve Golberg, the film's visual effects supervisor said that the Nøkk's animation required collaborations between several animation departments, artists, and technicians, and said that the time to define the Nøkk's design took at least 8 months of the film's production.[1] The animation team aimed to give the Nøkk a more stable appearance than the ocean as depicted in Moana.[1] According to effects supervisor Erin Ramos, the Nøkk's liquid-like appearance was developed by the film's effects team, which he said was "so that [the] Nøkk would feel like a strong and stormy creature".[1] According to Marlon West, the film's head of effects animation, the animators were given "the tools to actually perform with an ultimately invisible rig that resembled a little comet", as well as old key-framing technology, in order to represent the character of Gale.[1]

To create the wind spirit Gale a new tool called Swoop was invented. This required that four (and sometimes five) different departments had to cooperate on the animation of the character, with animators working with real-time feedback.[58]

The water simulation was made to be more realistic than in Moana, but some of the elements in the movie were so realistic that they felt inconsistent next to the characters, and so they had to be made more stylistic.[59]

Creating the flurry effect was so difficult for the animators that the directors decided Elsa would have perfected a permafrost coating for Olaf by the second movie.[60]

According to Smeed, the Earth Giants "had a long rigging process" in order for the characters to move without "[seeing] solid rock penetrating solid rock", while Marlon West, the film's head of effects animation, said that the film's effects team had the objective of generating "rocks that would fall out of the joints as they moved", though they had to be careful to avoid making the rocks distracting to the audience.[1]

Upon the reveal of the teaser poster, Gad announced that the snowflake on it has "quite a few surprises".[61] In July 2019, American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson raised an issue that "Water crystals have hexagonal “six-fold” symmetry" shown correctly in previous film, but this poster shows four instead.[62] Director Lee, in a reply, said that it is not really a snowflake.[63] Later, it was revealed in film that these four edges represent the four elemental spirits, while its center represents the fifth spirit; Elsa.[64]

According to Bell, the animators played pranks on the cast. When she visited Disney Animation to view early versions of her scenes, the animators added audible flatulence to a scene where Anna and Elsa were together in bed, and in another scene where Anna was supposed to jump between cliffs, she did not quite make it.[65]

Frozen II underwent significant revisions after its first test screening in San Diego.[46] Disney Animation discovered that adults liked the film, but children found it hard to follow.[46] The production team realized they needed to clarify the identity of The Voice as well as the point of Queen Elsa's transformation, add more comedy, and add more shots of Bruni, the fire salamander.[46] There was a scene full of grown-up expository dialogue in which the lead characters explained to the people trapped in the Enchanted Forest why they had come there, which was replaced with Olaf's humorous recap of the first film.[46] Due to these extensive changes, the animators needed to create 61 new shots and redo another 35, while an undisclosed number of shots were cut and left out of the finished film.[46] For example, approximately a dozen animators and artists had labored for two months on a far more elaborate resurrection scene for Olaf, but that scene was cut.[46]

The last major animation sequence completed before the production team locked picture was "Show Yourself," the showstopping musical number in which Elsa enters Ahtohallan and finally learns all the secrets she has been seeking. Del Vecho said that sequence "required all of the resources at the studio" to get the film done on time.[26] Lopez revealed that the first draft of "Show Yourself" was very different from the final version: "[E]veryone loved it, but we had to shape it. When we saw the first round of visuals and then we saw it in the film, everyone agreed changes needed to happen. And it went back and forth for months—it’s now four minutes and 20 seconds and it has a big ending. It transformed a lot, and it was hard."[66]

Harding's documentary revealed that the grueling process hinted at in press interviews by Del Vecho and Lopez arose from the difficulty of determining the true identity of The Voice.[46] Once the production team belatedly settled on Queen Iduna, "Show Yourself" finally began to come together, but then the artists, designers, and animators needed to figure out very quickly how to stage the dramatic culmination of Queen Elsa's journey towards becoming the Snow Queen.[46]

Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez returned from the first film to write new songs for the sequel, while Christophe Beck returned to compose the film's score.[3] The soundtrack was officially released on November 15, a week before the movie's theatrical release.[67]

Harding also dispatched a camera crew to the Lopezes' studio in Brooklyn to try to document their songwriting/composing process,[43] but the Lopezes found that having camera operators watching them disrupted their creativity and ended up doing most of that work off-camera.[45]

Frozen 2 was localized through Disney Character Voices International into 46 languages by its original theater release, four more than the first chapter of the franchise, originally issued in 42 languages. Following upon the success of localized versions of the first film, which led to the release of a complete set album featuring all the official versions of "Let It Go" released at the time,[74] as well as special dubbings released for the movie Moana, which gathered in the space of two years from its release a Tahitian,[75] a Māori[76][77] and a Hawaiian version,[78][79] a special Northern Sami dubbing was released for Frozen 2 with the title Jikŋon 2.[80][81][82]

Disney released the first teaser trailer for the film on February 13, 2019.[83] The teaser trailer was viewed 116.4 million times in its first 24 hours, becoming the second most viewed animated film trailer in that time period, surpassing the record of Incredibles 2 (113.6 million views).[84]

Disney partnered with 140 brands worldwide to promote Frozen 2, the highest number ever for any Disney animated film.[85] In the U.S. market, Disney heavily marketed the film through a variety of internal and external partners.[86] Disney's marketing partners deployed approximately "250 million touchpoints" (i.e., branded objects) into the U.S. retail sector in preparation for the film's release.[85] To support the film's massive marketing campaign, the lead cast members made numerous appearances in public and on many television shows.[86] During the month of November, the lead cast members' schedules were so jam-packed with appearances that in Bell's words, "[w]e flew on a helicopter to Disneyland because time is, it's not there."[87]

Apart from the world premiere, Disney Animation held two separate events for the American news media: on September 6, 2019, Disney Animation hosted an early preview day at its headquarters in Burbank,[88] and on November 9, 2019 (the Saturday after the premiere), Disney Animation held a press conference at the W Hotel in Hollywood.[89][90] Although Lee suffers from a fear of flying,[54] she joined Buck and Del Vecho on a global press tour to promote the film.[86]

UK supermarket chain Iceland promoted the film as part of its 2019 Christmas advertisement, as well as having a new and exclusive short scene made by Walt Disney Animation Studios, showing Olaf and Elsa's favorite things about Christmas.[91] Menzel, Gad and Groff were also interviewed on a Children in Need edition of The One Show on November 15.[92]

Frozen II was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on digital HD and 4K on February 11, 2020, followed by an Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD release on February 25.[93]

It was initially announced that the film would be released on Disney+ on June 26, 2020. However, on March 13, 2020, Disney announced that amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the film would be released on Disney+ three months earlier than originally announced. It was made available on Disney+ on March 15, 2020 in the United States, and on March 17, 2020 in Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand.[94][95][96] The film was originally due on Disney+ in the United Kingdom on July 17, 2020.[97] However, the date was brought forward. Frozen II debuted on Disney+ in the UK and Ireland on July 3, 2020, two weeks earlier than expected.[98]

On April 11, 2019, it was announced that a companion documentary series would be launched on the Disney+ streaming service within its first year entitled Into the Unknown: Making Frozen II.[99] On June 26, 2020, the documentary series became available for streaming on Disney+.[45] To create the series, Harding winnowed down 1,300 hours of footage[45] to six episodes of approximately 35 to 45 minutes in length.[44]

Frozen II grossed $477.4 million in the United States and Canada, and $972.7 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $1.450 billion.[6][5] Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $599 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues.[100]

In the United States and Canada, the film was released alongside A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and 21 Bridges, and was projected to gross anywhere from $90–135 million from 4,440 theaters in its opening weekend.[101] On its opening weekend, the film was presented in 2,500 3D theaters, 400 IMAX theaters, 800 premium large format screens, and 235 D-Box/4D enhanced theaters.[102] It earned $42.2 million on its first day, including $8.5 million from Thursday previews, a record for an animated film in November. It went on to debut to $130.3 million, the highest opening for an animated film in the month and fifth-best overall.[102] In its second weekend the film grossed $85.6 million (including a record $126.3 million over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend), remaining in first.[103] It then made $34.7 million the following weekend, finishing in first for a third straight week.[104] It was finally dethroned in its fourth weekend by Jumanji: The Next Level.[105]

During its opening weekend, the film also grossed $228.2 million from 37 overseas markets for a global debut total of $358.5 million, the highest ever for an animated title, surpassing the 2019 The Lion King remake. Notable figures included landing the best opening of all-time for an animated pic in the United Kingdom ($17.8 million) and France ($13.4 million), the biggest start ever for a Pixar or Disney Animation title in China ($53 million), Japan ($18.2 million), Germany ($14.9 million) and Spain ($5.8 million), and the third-biggest industry opening of any film in South Korea ($31.5 million).[106] In its second weekend in the United Kingdom, the film brought $11.4 million, bringing its total gross there to $35.3 million.[107] As of February 16, 2020, the film's 10 highest grossing international markets were China ($122.3 million), Japan ($121.2 million), South Korea ($97.3 million), United Kingdom ($69.4 million), Germany ($60.1 million), France ($57.3 million), Russia ($33 million), Mexico ($28.8 million), Brazil ($28.9 million), and Australia ($27.3 million).[108]

According to Disney (who does not consіder the 2019 The Lion King remake to be an anіmated fіlm), Frozen II is the hіghest-grossing anіmated fіlm, surpassing the first Frozen.[109]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 78% based on 329 reviews, with an average rating of 6.72/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Frozen II can't quite recapture the showstopping feel of its predecessor, but it remains a dazzling adventure into the unknown."[110] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 64 out of 100, based on 47 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."[111] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an average 4.5 out of 5 stars, with 71% saying they would definitely recommend it.[102]

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times gave the film a positive review, saying, "As is often true in animation, Frozen 2 soars highest when it embraces abstraction, as in one number with a pitch-black void that entertainingly evokes Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin."[112] Writing for MovieWeb, Julian Roman said that the film "is a darker journey, but illuminated with breathtaking animation and stunning action scenes. There's enough good humor for balance amid an avalanche of new songs."[113] Nell Minow of RogerEbert.com gave the film a 3.5 out of 4 stars and said: "Frozen II has an autumnal palette, with russet and gold setting the stage for an unexpectedly elegiac tone in the follow-up to one of Disney's most beloved animated features."[114] Ben Travis of Empire Magazine gave the film a four out of five stars, stating, "The best things about the first film—the characters and music—once again sing in a frequently dazzling if narratively flawed sequel that's better at being sensory than sense-making."[115] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone also gave the film a four out of five stars, and said, "the delight and dazzle of this frosty follow-up brings it all home in a climax that should have audiences panting for a part III."[116] Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter gave a positive review of the film, saying, "Frozen 2 has everything you would expect—catchy new songs, more time with easy-to-like characters, striking backdrops, cute little jokes, a voyage of discovery plot and female empowerment galore—expect the unexpected."[117] Simran Hans of The Guardian gave the film a four out of five stars and said, "The sisters try to heal the sins of the past in a moving follow-up that touches on climate change and has at least one great song."[118]

Kristen Page-Kirby of The Washington Post gave the film a two out of four stars and wrote, "Yes, Frozen II is a letdown when compared with the original. But it's also a lackluster disappointment on its own—a pale shadow of what it could have been. It's hard to see how the same team who made something so cool in 2013 could deliver something so—there's no other word for it—lukewarm."[119] Mark Kermode of Kermode and Mayo's Film Review stated that though Frozen II has "technically, on a box ticking level" retained many of the same elements of its predecessor, "I never felt the same level of emotional involvement that I did with the first one."[120]