Disney's Frozen

[Scar]

I've been listening to the Animation Addicts podcast review of Frozen and they were talking about the plot holes in the film. Do you think Disney left these plot holes open on purpose for a potential sequel? Has Disney said anything yet about making a sequel?

[Dan]

I imagine with the film about to become only the second from Disney Feature Animation to cross $300 million domestically that a sequel would definitely be under consideration.

[Ben]

Well, hopefully, this won't mean a "sequel" per se, but rather that Disney animated musical fairy tales are a proven success. After all, what more is Frozen than a "sequel" to Tangled? The reason the film was made was because Tangled was the hit it was. Hence we probably won't get a direct sequel to Frozen (in keeping with the Disney fairy tales), but its success will undoubtedly have the Disney brass looking at more similar stories which could be made in the same mold and return the same kind of takings on the same kind of investment.

Where Walt was clever, though, was that he didn't follow Snow White with more Snow White. Due to circumstances as much as desire, it wasn't until Cinderella more than ten years later that he returned to that genre, following that up almost ten years again with Sleeping Beauty. Luckily, Disney has three or four other features coming along before another potential fairy tale, so hopefully audiences won't get the kind of fairy tale fatigue they might do if we started getting more and more of the same kind of thing.

Frozen's success *does* mean we'll get more of the same, but hopefully not a straight sequel (although I'd bet we see the characters return in some kind of spin-off short, featurette or show).

[James]

You can't top pigs with pigs.

[Ben]

[Dan]

In addition to the box office success, the Frozen soundtrack could end up being number one on the Billboard 200 once all the numbers from the week are tallied, unseating Beyonce's self-titled new album. The soundtrack has been doing gang-busters since it made its debut at Number 18, moving up the next week to 11, then 10, then 8, and then most recently at 4.

Should Frozen hit No. 1, it will be the first animated feature soundtrack to do so since Curious George back in 2006. The last Disney feature whose soundtrack went No. 1 was Pocahontas while the last movie soundtrack to top the list was last year's Les Miserables.

As for song singles, Idina Menzel's "Let It Go" has moved up to No. 32, Demi Lovato's went up to No. 43, and this week featured the debut entries of "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" (No. 65) and "For the First Time in Forever" (No. 74).

[Dan]

Here's a great article where Vulture interviews Robert and Kristen Lopez about some of the fan-made homages to the songs from Frozen found all over the net.

http://www.vulture.com/2014/01/frozen-b ... sions.html

[Vernadyn]

As for song singles, Idina Menzel's "Let It Go" has moved up to No. 32, Demi Lovato's went up to No. 43, and this week featured the debut entries of "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" (No. 65) and "For the First Time in Forever" (No. 74).

Nice to see that the Idina Menzel version of Let It Go is more popular than the Demi Lovato version…and that's a sentiment that I've heard from many of the kids/preteens/teens I know. Maybe there's hope for the future!

(Personally, I think Demi Lovato is neither the worst thing to happen to music nor particularly interesting as a singer.)

[EricJ]

It's definitely got a gushy-fangirl cult following by now (far and above the usual "Do boys like Disney?" whines, coming from someone who thought Tangled was the perfect mass-audience Disney animated)--
Half from soundtrack fans, the other half from "Oo, she didn't marry the prince, that's so, like, progressive!"

And not to beat old targets into the ground, but gushy cult-fangirl audiences wishfully centrating on their own subjective feelings over one or two plot devices is how one of those....other Disney movies got so excessively overpraised in the first place. ("Oo, she reads and he gave her a library, that's so empowering and romantic!" )

[Dan]

Beginning next Friday (January 31), select showings in 1,000 theaters throughout the US will feature sing-along versions of Frozen where the audience is encouraged to sing-along to the songs.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movi ... g/4783327/

[Bill1978]

As most know I am a massive Disney fanboy and will defend them to the hills in most instances, but this really does just smack of flogging a dead horse for money.

[droosan]

this 'dead horse' is still playing to occasional 'sold-out' theaters, over two months into its release.

[James]

this 'dead horse' is still playing to occasional 'sold-out' theaters, over two months into its release.

AND it has the #1 album in the country AND people currently voting on a potential Best Song Oscar. Two more good reasons on top of the money to do something highlighting the music and keeping it in the news and in the box office charts.

[EricJ]

As most know I am a massive Disney fanboy and will defend them to the hills in most instances, but this really does just smack of flogging a dead horse for money.

Yeah, but a heterosexual sing-along screening, where nobody thinks it's Rocky Horror and dresses up? When was the last time we had one of those?

[Dan]

Yeah, but a heterosexual sing-along screening, where nobody thinks it's Rocky Horror and dresses up? When was the last time we had one of those?

Well, Disney is gonna have a girl dress up as Elsa and introduce each screening of the sing-along at the El Capitan.