The Princess and the Frog

Disney had once announced that 2004's Home on the Range would be their last traditionally animated film. After the company's acquisition of Pixar in 2006, Ed Catmull and John Lasseter, the new president and chief creative officer of Disney Animation Studios, reversed this decision and reinstated hand-drawn animation at the studio.[16][17] Many animators who had either been laid off or had left the studio when the traditional animation units were dissolved in 2003 were located and re-hired for the project.[18] Lasseter also brought back directors Ron Clements and John Musker, whose earlier works include The Great Mouse Detective (1986), The Little Mermaid (1989), Aladdin (1992), Hercules (1997), and Treasure Planet (2002).[19][20] The duo had left the company in 2005, but Lasseter requested their return to Disney to direct and write the film and had let them choose the style of animation (traditional or CGI) they wanted to use.[12]

The story for the film began development by merging two projects in development at Disney and Pixar at the time, both based around "The Frog Prince" fairy tale.[12][18] One of the projects was based on E. D. Baker's The Frog Princess, in which the story's heroine (Princess Emma) kisses a prince turned frog (Prince Eadric), only to become a frog herself.[18] The Princess and the Frog returns to the musical film format used in many of the previously successful Disney animated films, with a style Musker and Clements declared, like with Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, had inspiration from Golden Age Disney features such as Cinderella.[8]

Musker and Clements thought that given all fairy tales were set in Europe, they could do an American fairy tale.[8] They stated that they chose New Orleans as a tribute to the history of the city, for its "magical" qualities, and because it was Lasseter's favorite city.[12][21] The directors spent ten days in Louisiana before starting to write the film.[8]

The Princess and the Frog was originally announced as The Frog Princess in July 2006,[16] and early concepts and songs were presented to the public at The Walt Disney Company's annual shareholders' meeting in March 2007.[22] These announcements drew criticism from African-American media outlets, due to elements of the Frog Princess story, characters, and settings considered distasteful.[23][24] African-American critics disapproved of the original name for the heroine, "Maddy", due to its similarity to the derogatory term "mammy".[23] Also protested were Maddy's original career as a chambermaid,[24] the choice to have the black heroine's love interest be a non-black prince,[23] and the use of a black male voodoo witchdoctor as the film's villain.[23] The Frog Princess title was also thought by critics to be a slur on French people.[25] Also questioned was the film's setting of New Orleans, which had been heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, resulting in the expulsion of a large number of mostly black residents.[26] Critics claimed the choice of New Orleans as the setting for a Disney film with a black heroine was an affront to the Katrina victims' plight.[23][26]

In response to these early criticisms, the film's title was changed in May 2007 from The Frog Princess to The Princess and the Frog. The name "Maddy" was changed to "Tiana",[25][27] and the character's occupation was altered from chambermaid to waitress.[23] Talk show host Oprah Winfrey was hired as a technical consultant for the film, leading to her taking a voice-acting role in the film as Tiana's mother, Eudora.[12]

The head of story, Don Hall, described the plot as a fairy tale "twisted enough that it seems new and fresh", with a kingdom that is a modern city, a handsome prince that is a "knuckleheaded playboy" and a variation on the fairy godmother with Mama Odie. Co-writer Rob Edwards also said The Princess and the Frog was "a princess movie for people who don't like princess movies". As the writers thought Tiana's character motivation of simply dreaming of having her own restaurant was not appealing enough, they expanded so it was her father's as well, with the extra philosophy of "food bringing people together from all walks of life". Musker and Clements stated that while Tiana already starts as a sympathetic character, the events of the plot make her "understand things in a deeper level" and change people around her. Both protagonists would learn from each other—Naveen to take responsibilities, Tiana to enjoy life—as well as figuring from Ray's passion for Evangeline that the perfect balance is brought by having someone you love to share the experience.[8] Tiana became the first African-American Disney Princess.[28][29]

Tiana was inspired in part by famed restaurateur Leah Chase, who Clements and Musker met on their research trip to New Orleans.[30] Clements elaborated, "There's a woman in New Orleans named Lee (sic) Chase who was a waitress and ultimately opened a restaurant with her husband … we met with her and we talked with her and she went to kind of into her story, her philosophy about food, which is a big element of the movie."[31]

Anika Noni Rose voiced Tiana.

On December 1, 2006, a detailed casting call was announced for the film at the Manhattan Theatre Source forum.[32] The casting call states the film as being an American fairy tale musical set in New Orleans during the 1926 April 26 Jazz Age and provides a detailed list of the film's major characters.

In February 2007, it was reported that Dreamgirls actresses Jennifer Hudson and Anika Noni Rose were top contenders for the voice of Tiana, and that Alicia Keys directly contacted Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook about voicing the role.[33] It was later reported that Tyra Banks was considered for the role as well.[34] By April 2007, it was confirmed that Rose would be voicing Tiana.[35] Three months later, it was reported that Keith David would be doing the voice of Doctor Facilier, the villain of the film.[36]

Clements and Musker had agreed early on that the style they were aiming for was primarily that of Lady and the Tramp (1955), a film which they and John Lasseter feel represents "the pinnacle of Disney's style".[37] "After that, everything started becoming more stylized, like Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians—which are fantastic films as well, but there's a particular style (to Lady and the Tramp) that's so classically Disney."[38] Lady and the Tramp also heavily informed the style of the New Orleans scenes, while Disney's Bambi (1942) served as the template for the bayou scenes.[37] Bambi was described as a stylistic reference for the painted backgrounds, as according to art director Ian Gooding "Bambi painted what it feels like to be in the forest instead of the forest" so The Princess and the Frog would in turn try capturing the essence of roaming through New Orleans.[8]

The former trend in Disney's hand-drawn features where the characters and cinematography were influenced by a CGI-look had been abandoned. Andreas Deja, a veteran Disney animator who supervised the character of Mama Odie, says "I always thought that maybe we should distinguish ourselves to go back to what 2D is good at, which is focusing on what the line can do rather than volume, which is a CG kind of thing. So we are doing less extravagant Treasure Planet kind of treatments. You have to create a world but [we're doing it more simply]. What we're trying to do with Princess and the Frog is hook up with things that the old guys did earlier. It's not going to be graphic…".[39] Deja also mentions that Lasseter was aiming for the Disney sculptural and dimensional look of the 1950s: "All those things that were non-graphic, which means go easy on the straight lines and have one volume flow into the other—an organic feel to the drawing."[39] Lasseter also felt that traditional animation created more character believability.[40] For example, with Louis the alligator, created by Eric Goldberg, Lasseter said: "It's the believability of this large character being able to move around quite like that."[40] Choreographer Betsy Baytos was brought by the directors to lead a team of eccentric dancers that gave reference to make each character a different style of movement. The character design tried to create beautiful drawings through subtle shapes, particularly for most characters being human. For the frog versions of Tiana and Naveen, while the animators started with realistic designs, they eventually went for cutesy characters "removing all that is unappealing in frogs", similar to Pinocchio's Jiminy Cricket.[8]

Toon Boom Animation's Toon Boom Harmony software was used as the main software package for the production of the film, as the Computer Animation Production System (CAPS) system that Disney developed with Pixar in the 1980s for use on their previous traditionally animated films had become outdated.[41] The Harmony software was augmented with a number of plug-ins to provide CAPS-like effects such as shading on cheeks and smoke effects.[13][39] The reinstated traditional unit's first production, a 2007 Goofy cartoon short entitled How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, was partly animated without paper by using Harmony and Wacom Cintiq pressure-sensitive tablets. The character animators found some difficulty with this approach, and decided to use traditional paper and pencil drawings, which were then scanned into the computer systems, for The Princess and the Frog.[13]

The one exception to the new Toon Boom Harmony pipeline was the "Almost There" dream sequence, which utilized an Art Deco graphic style based on the art of Harlem Renaissance painter Aaron Douglas.[42] Supervised by Eric Goldberg and designed by Sue Nichols,[43] the "Almost There" sequence's character animation was done on paper without going through the clean-up animation department,[12] and scanned directly into Photoshop. The artwork was then enhanced to affect the appearance of painted strokes and fills, and combined with backgrounds, using Adobe After Effects.[10][13]

The visual effects and backgrounds for the film were created digitally using Cintiq tablet displays.[13][44] Marlon West, one of Disney's veteran animation visual effects supervisors, says about the production; "Those guys had this bright idea to bring back hand-drawn animation, but everything had to be started again from the ground up. One of the first things we did was focus on producing shorts, to help us re-introduce the 2D pipeline. I worked as vfx supervisor on the Goofy short, How to Hook Up Your Home Theater. It was a real plus for the effects department, so we went paperless for The Princess and the Frog." The backgrounds were painted digitally using Adobe Photoshop, and many of the architectural elements were based upon 3D models built in Autodesk Maya.[13] Much of the clean-up animation, digital ink-and-paint, and compositing were outsourced to third-party companies in Orlando, Florida (Premise Entertainment), Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Yowza! Animation), and Brooklin, São Paulo, Brazil (HGN Produções).[9]

Originally, Alan Menken was considered to be in charge of the soundtrack. However, Lasseter thought that since Menken scored the Disney film Enchanted (2007), the music might be too repetitive, especially the fact that some previous Renaissance Disney animated films technically had other songwriters (particularly The Lion King, Mulan, and Tarzan). Lasseter realized that Randy Newman, whom he had previously worked with, was the perfect choice for the film and replaced Menken with him, due to the fact that Newman is a jazz composer and grew up in New Orleans, making him compatible with the project´s musical setting that is based on. Newman had also written the songs for another broadway-style musical 2D animated feature, Warner Bros.' Cats Don't Dance (1997), and had written the songs for Toy Story (1995).

During Disney's 2007 shareholder meeting, Randy Newman and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band performed the film's opening number, "Down in New Orleans", with famous New Orleans singer Dr. John singing, while slides of pre-production art from the film played on a screen.[22] Other songs in the film include "Almost There" (a solo for Tiana), "Dig a Little Deeper" (a song for Mama Odie), "When We're Human" (a song for Louis, Tiana and Naveen [as frogs]), "Friends on the Other Side" (a solo for Doctor Facilier), and "Gonna Take You There" and "Ma Belle Evangeline" (two solos for Ray).[22] Newman composed, arranged, and conducted the music for the film, a mixture of jazz, zydeco, blues, and gospel styles performed by the voice cast members for the respective characters while R&B singer-songwriter Ne-Yo wrote and performed the end title song "Never Knew I Needed", an R&B love song referring to the romance between the film's two main characters, Tiana and Naveen. Supported by a music video by Melina, "Never Knew I Needed" was issued to radio outlets as a commercial single from the Princess and the Frog soundtrack.[45]

The film's soundtrack album, The Princess and the Frog: Original Songs and Score, contains the ten original songs from the film and seven instrumental pieces. The soundtrack was released on November 23, 2009, the day before the limited release of the film in New York and Los Angeles.[46]

The Princess and the Frog was supported by a wide array of merchandise leading up to and following the film's release. Although Disney's main marketing push was not set to begin until November 2009, positive word-of-mouth promotion created demand for merchandise well in advance of the film.[51] Princess Tiana costumes were selling out prior to Halloween 2009, and a gift set of Tiana-themed hair-care products from Carol's Daughter sold out in seven hours on the company's website.[51] Other planned merchandise includes a cookbook for children and even a wedding gown.[51] Princess Tiana was also featured a few months before the release in the Disney on Ice: Let's Celebrate! show.[52] The film itself was promoted through advertisements, including one from GEICO where Naveen, as a frog, converses with the company's gecko mascot.[53]

A live parade and show called Tiana's Showboat Jubilee! premiered on October 25, 2009, at the Magic Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida,[54] and on November 5 at Disneyland in California.[55] In Disneyland, actors in New Orleans Square paraded to the Rivers of America and boarded the park's steamboat.[55] From there, the cast, starring Princess Tiana, Prince Naveen, Louis the alligator, and Doctor Facilier, would sing songs from the movie, following a short storyline taking place after the events of the film. The Disneyland version's actors actually partook in singing, while the Walt Disney World rendition incorporated lip-syncing.[55]

Tiana's Showboat Jubilee! ran at both parks until January 3, 2010.[54][55] At Disneyland Park, the show was replaced by a land-based event called Princess Tiana's Mardi Gras Celebration, which features Princess Tiana along with five of the original presentation's "Mardi Gras dancers" and the park's "Jambalaya Jazz Band" as they perform songs from the movie.[56] "Tiana's Mardi Gras Celebration" officially ended on October 3, 2010. However, it returned to Disneyland from 2011–2013 as part of the "Limited Time Magic" family-fun weekends.[57][58][59]

Tiana also appears in Disneyland Paris' New Generation Festival.[60] Some of the characters appear frequently during World of Color, the nightly fountain and projection show presented at Disney California Adventure. Disney announced on June 4, 2009, that they would release a video game inspired by the film and it was released on November 2009 exclusively for Wii and Nintendo DS platforms. It has been officially described an "adventure through the exciting world of New Orleans in a family-oriented video game", featuring events from the film and challenges for Princess Tiana.[61]

On its limited day release, the film grossed $263,890 at two theaters and grossed $786,190 its opening weekend.[62][63] On its opening day in wide release, the film grossed $7 million at 3,434 theaters.[64] It went on to gross $24.2 million over the opening weekend averaging $7,050 per theater,[65] ranking at #1 for the weekend, and making it the highest-grossing start to date for an animated movie in December, a record previously held by Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.[66] The film went on to gross $104.4 million (in the United States and Canada) and over $270 million (worldwide), making it a box office success, and became the fifth-highest-grossing animated film of 2009.[1] While the film out-grossed Disney's more recent hand-drawn films such as The Emperor's New Groove, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, and Home on the Range, it was less auspicious than the animated films from Walt Disney Animation Studios' 1990s heyday, despite having a similar successful start compared to The Little Mermaid. Disney animator Tom Sito compared the film's box office performance to that of The Great Mouse Detective (1986), which was a step up from the theatrical run of the 1985 box office bomb The Black Cauldron.[67] It can be considered that the film, despite having been a box office hit in general, was unexpectedly overshadowed by the release of Avatar a week later after its release.

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported the film has an 85% approval rating based on 200 reviews, with an average rating of 7.40/10. The site's general consensus is that "The warmth of traditional Disney animation makes this occasionally lightweight fairy-tale update a lively and captivating confection for the holidays."[68] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[69]

Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film an "A" grade and applauded the film's creative team for "uphold[ing] the great tradition of classic Disney animation".[70] Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter praised Walt Disney Animation for "rediscovering its traditional hand-drawn animation" and for "a thing called story".[71] David Germain of the Associated Press wrote that "The Princess and the Frog is not the second coming of Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King. It's just plain pleasant, an old-fashioned little charmer that's not straining to be the next glib animated compendium of pop-culture flotsam."[72]

Justin Chang of Variety was less receptive, stating "this long-anticipated throwback to a venerable house style never comes within kissing distance of the studio's former glory".[73] Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News gave the film three stars out of five stars while saying "The Princess and the Frog breaks the color barrier for Disney princesses, but is a throwback to traditional animation and her story is a retread".[74] Village Voice's Scott Foundas found that "the movie as a whole never approache[d] the wit, cleverness, and storytelling brio of the studio's early-1990s animation renaissance (Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King) or pretty much anything by Pixar".[75] Betsy Sharkey, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, gave the film a positive review claiming: "With The Princess and the Frog they've gotten just about everything right. The dialogue is fresh-prince clever, the themes are ageless, the rhythms are riotous and the return to a primal animation style is beautifully executed."[76]

Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and admired Disney's step back to traditional animation, writing, "No 3-D! No glasses! No extra ticket charge! No frantic frenzies of meaningless action! And…good gravy! A story! Characters! A plot! This is what classic animation once was like!", but stated that the film "inspires memories of Disney's Golden Age it doesn't quite live up to, as I've said, but it's spritely and high-spirited, and will allow kids to enjoy it without visually assaulting them."[77] S. Jhoanna Robledo of Common Sense Media gave the film three out of five stars, writing, "First African-American Disney princess is a good role model".[78] Saint Bryan of the NBC-TV Seattle praised the film and called it "The Best Disney Movie Since The Lion King".[79]

Upon its release, the film created controversy among some Christians over its use of Louisiana Voodoo as a plot device.[80] Christianity Today's review of the film cited its sexual undertones and use of voodoo, arguing that the scenes with Dr. Facilier and his "friends on the other side" contain many horror elements and that young children might be frightened by the film.[81] The film's treatment of Louisiana voodoo as a type of magic instead of a religion also drew criticism from non-Christian factions.[82]

The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and twice for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, but lost to Up and Crazy Heart, respectively.[4][83] It was also nominated for eight Annie Awards and, at the 37th Annie Awards Ceremony on February 6, 2010, won three.[11]

The Princess and the Frog was released in North America on DVD and Blu-ray on March 16, 2010.[95]

The film is available on DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray combo pack editions. The combo pack includes the DVD, Digital Copy, and Blu-ray of the film.[95] The DVD edition has sold over 4.5 million copies and has made $71.8 million in DVD sales,[96] making it the ninth-best-selling DVD of 2010.[97] As of 2019, the film had earned $119 million from its home media releases.[3] The Princess and the Frog was released on 4K Blu-ray on November 5, 2019.[98]

While being technically a commercial and critical success in general, the company originally considered releasing at least one hand-drawn animated film every two years,[99] starting with Winnie the Pooh (2011), and an adaptation of "The Snow Queen", which was later switched to CGI (although in the same visual style of Tangled by blending elements of the two mediums) due to complex visual elements in the story and later re-titled as Frozen released in 2013.

The blog website /Film noted in July 2014 with the release of hand-drawn concept art for Frozen (which grossed over US$1 billion worldwide), that any future hand-drawn animated films have been "killed" for the time being due to The Princess and the Frog failing "to ignite the box office".[100] Two months later, however, many Disney artists announced they were working on a new independent hand-drawn animated film, Hullabaloo, as part of an attempt to bring back hand-drawn animation,[101] consisting in three short films, while others got later involved on making the Netflix animated film Klaus, released in 2019.

Looking back on the experience four years later, Catmull acknowledged that Disney had made a "serious mistake" in the process of marketing and releasing the film.[102] Walt Disney Studios' marketing department had warned Disney Animation that the word "princess" in the title "would lead moviegoers to think that the film was for girls only," but the animation studio's management insisted on keeping the "princess" title because they believed that the film's quality and hand-drawn animation would bring in all quadrants anyway.[102] In Catmull's words, this belief "was our own version of a stupid pill."[102] The marketing department turned out to be correct in their prediction that many moviegoers would and did avoid the film because they thought it was "for little girls only."[102] This error was further compounded by the fact that the film opened a week before Avatar.[102]

Looking back on the experience seven years later, Lasseter told Variety: "I was determined to bring back [hand-drawn animation] because I felt it was such a heritage of the Disney studio, and I love the art form … I was stunned that Princess didn't do better. We dug into it and did a lot of research and focus groups. It was viewed as old-fashioned by the audience."[103]

Despite the absence of traditional animated feature films after the release of Winnie the Pooh, Disney Animation has been using both mediums for the sake of experimenting with new techniques and styles. In 2019, after Lasseter's exit from the studio and Jennifer Lee as the new chief creative officer of the animation facility the previous year, she, along with producer Peter Del Vecho and director Chris Buck confirmed that making another 2D animated film is still possible, and that the different styles are driven by the filmmakers who chose what to use to tell their stories in the right way.[104]