The Long, Cold Story Behind Disney's 'Frozen'
By Stephanie Chase in Movies / TV / Theatre on 31 March 2014

http://www.contactmusic.com/idina-menzel/news/story-behind-disney-frozen-highest-grossing-animation_4133193

Accessed 13th Nov 2017

'The origins of 'Frozen’ lie in the Hans Christian Andersen tale ‘The Snow Queen’, a story which had been the subject of a major Disney headache for nearly 70 years at the time of ‘Frozen’s’ inception. Back in 1943 Walt Disney saw the potential of the Danish author’s stories, which included 'The Little Mermaid’, ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and ‘The Snow Queen’. The original plan was for Walt to collaborate with Samuel Goldwyn to produce a biographical piece on Andersen and incorporate some of his famous works into the story, using Disney animation. Eventually the project fell through and Goldwyn went on to do his own movie on Andersen in 1952, leaving the animation part out. Despite the setback, Disney never lost sight of the potential of Andersen’s stories, most notably ‘The Snow Queen’.


'As the idea of a 'Snow Queen' movie got set aside, the early 90s came and Disney entered into its second golden era, the ‘Disney Renaissance’ as it was called. Ironically the period was heralded in by a different Andersen adaptation, ‘The Little Mermaid’. Its sucess meant that once again ‘The Snow Queen’ was being talked about. Actor Harvey Fierstein even made a story pitch, but by 2002 ‘The Snow Queen’ was once again off the table. Hope again came in 2008 when Disney and Pixar head John Lasseter showed interest after an idea from 'Tarzan' director Chris Buck but two years later the idea still hadn’t moved any further. Then ‘Tangled’ came in 2011 and, you guessed it,  ‘The Snow Queen’ story was once again being looked at. This time things looked a lot more promising and the movie title 'Frozen' appeared on Disney's list of upcoming productions, to much speculation. But the problem remained of what to do with the Snow Queen character. Could she ever be more than a one diminutional villain?'