'Frozen 3' Just Got a Major Update, and Elsa May Have Finally Met Her Match [Exclusive]
Disney is getting closer than ever to finally delivering on its trio of major animated sequel announcements from 2023. Toy Story 5 sent Jessie, Buzz, and Woody back into theaters this summer and won over both critics and audiences with its emotional clash of toys and tech, earning $1.15 billion globally along the way. Before that, Zootopia 2 broke records last November as the second highest-grossing animated film of all time with an over $1.87 billion haul. Next on the docket is the long-awaited return to Arendelle with Frozen 3, which is now just over one year from entering the unknown all over again.
Details about Anna (Kristen Bell), Elsa (Idina Menzel), and Olaf’s (Josh Gad) return to the big screen have mostly been encased in ice since Bob Iger first shared the news that another wintery adventure was in order. D23 in August finally revealed a few key plot points for the sequel as it further explores the princesses’ expanded world, though. Namely, wedding bells will be ringing in the threequel as Anna and Kristoff’s (Jonathan Groff) wedding gets underway and they set their honeymoon plans. Even the snowman Olaf has someone new in his life — a snowy girlfriend named Samantha. However, not all is well in Arendelle, with a new black-clad witch who figures to stand in the way of the sisters’ happily ever after.
With the new film arriving around this time next year, Head of Disney Animation Jared Bush had much to share about where things were in production. He sat down with Collider’s Steve Weintraub for a wide-ranging conversation at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival on not just the status of Frozen 3, but its sequel, Frozen 4, and, of course, the songs. “Well, Frozen 3 is out in one year,” he confirmed. “I will say, very exciting. Right now, literally as we speak, Kristen [Anderson-Lopez] and Bobby Lopez are working on one of the movie’s most emotional songs right now. They are about five songs in.”
Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life
looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in
return.
You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and
somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right
thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.
- This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat,
fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends. - You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost
everything you touch is older than your entire family line. - The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives
every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight. - You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot.
You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where
you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is
finding out what is over there.
- One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who
each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together. - You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off
somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea. - The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land
harder because of that rather than in spite of it. - You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of
it.
You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The
Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the
people are where it all gets complicated.
- Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is
a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept. - You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the
Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer. - The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a
rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people. - You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story
got told wrong.
You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and
you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as
everybody kept telling you.
- Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners,
which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse. - You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for
something nobody thought to test for. - The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud
every time a prophecy tries to get in the way. - Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you
difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong.
‘Frozen 3’ Features a “Very Special” Story, a Powerful New Villain, and Fresh Songs
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Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures -
Image via Netflix -
Image via Walt Disney Animation Studios -
Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Bush feels confident that Frozen 3 will be something fresh for viewers who have followed Anna and Elsa since “Let It Go” first became an inescapable hit. “I’d say that we have a very special story in store for people. I think one that will surprise people.” However, he saved a more ominous tease for the new villain and how she matches up against Arendelle’s former queen. “And we have a brand-new character coming in, a new villain, into the world of Frozen, and someone who may be more powerful than Elsa. So, lots going on.” The evildoer’s voice was heard by D23 attendees, but when asked when the announcement of the actor would come, Bush merely teased, “We’ve already recorded her multiple times” and said, “Stay tuned.”
As for how it all fits into the wider arc of Frozen, he confirmed, “There’s not a whole lot of time between” Frozen 2 and the latest installment. Considering the first sequel ends its deeper exploration of the world and its mythology with Kristoff proposing to Anna and Elsa abdicating the throne, it makes sense for the two to be so closely connected, even if the second film came out seven years ago now.
“I’d say that, if you remember the end of Frozen 2, Kristoff finally proposed to Anna. This movie starts with their wedding. So, not a whole lot of time has passed between those. How much time? You’ll discover in the film.”
“I’d say that, if you remember the end of Frozen 2, Kristoff finally proposed to Anna. This movie starts with their wedding. So, not a whole lot of time has passed between those. How much time? You’ll discover in the film.”
Part of why Frozen became such a smash hit, more than its story and even in comparison to other Disney animated films, is the soundtrack. From “Let It Go” and “Do You Wanna Build a Snowman” to “Into the Unknown,” the individual songs have lived well beyond their place on-screen. Between the big wedding, a new villain in need of a tune, and much more, the Lopez’s have plenty to work with in crafting their next set of tracks made for viewers to sing along to. Disney jumped to bring the couple back as soon as Frozen 3 was announced, given how integral they’ve been to the identity of the fantasy franchise so far.
It’s too early to talk in-depth about the kinds of songs the composers cooked up, but Bell has one clear favorite so far that plays at a pivotal moment. “I’ll say that there is a song that you hear around the wedding of Anna and Kristoff that is spectacular.” When asked if it was made specifically for the happy couple, he decided to keep that secret for the actual wedding day. “I won’t go into any more details.”
‘Frozen 4’ Will Continue Anna and Elsa’s Emotional Journey
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Image via Disney Animation
After initially leaving the future of Arendelle up to other creators, Frozen co-director Jennifer Lee returned to helm both Frozen 3 and 4 and continue the franchise’s reign as one of Disney’s biggest modern empires. Although there’s still a wait ahead for the third installment, Bush offered a glimpse of what’s to come in the further future of the kingdom under Lee and what the process was, with the knowledge that the threequel wouldn’t be the end. When asked if the announcement of two new films in the same year changed how either sequel was written to accommodate the other, he admitted, “It’s tricky to answer that question. I’d say for me personally — again, talking just for myself — I think you have to have a rough sense of emotionally where you want your characters to go, a sense of an emotional journey. The plot behind that, at least for me, is secondary to the character journey.”
Bush has stuck to the mentality of making two good, complete Frozen movies rather than trying to ensure both feel like two parts of a whole. In the very early stages, however, he says the hope was for a quick turnaround on both movies, though it didn’t take long for that idea to fall apart. That need to make every Frozen the best standalone movie possible was simply too great to ignore, though the challenge came from making each subsequent story of the Arendelle royals still feel like it’s ultimately building towards some kind of satisfying happy ending for these characters.
“Looking at Frozen 3 and what a Frozen 4 could look like, I know early on it was, ‘We’re going to put them right together, and they’re going to be out in the world. It’s going to happen quick.’ That’s not what we’re doing, for a lot of reasons. To me, an important one is we want to make sure that Frozen 3 is the best movie it can possibly be, so that when you get to the end of the movie, do you feel like you’ve watched a complete story? That it feels like something that feels fulfilling. That doesn’t always mean that everything is buttoned up, but it does mean that you have to be building to something that feels worthy of the end of a franchise that’s that important to people.”
</blockquote>“Looking at Frozen 3 and what a Frozen 4 could look like, I know early on it was, ‘We’re going to put them right together, and they’re going to be out in the world. It’s going to happen quick.’ That’s not what we’re doing, for a lot of reasons. To me, an important one is we want to make sure that Frozen 3 is the best movie it can possibly be, so that when you get to the end of the movie, do you feel like you’ve watched a complete story? That it feels like something that feels fulfilling. That doesn’t always mean that everything is buttoned up, but it does mean that you have to be building to something that feels worthy of the end of a franchise that’s that important to people.”
The biggest thing, Bush believes, was to not get too locked in on what each future Frozen film needs to look like or what story it needs to tell, but to still have ideas for how to build on whatever the previous installment ends up looking like. His greatest concern was becoming too married to a story for Frozen 4 that Frozen 3 suffered for it.
“But then you also need to think, ‘Okay, well, if there was a future story, what might that look like?’ So you have to have a rough sense of that. But I’d say in my personal experience, I try not to go too in the weeds on that because it can lock you into a Frozen 3 that you may want to change or make better. If you’re so rigid on what [Frozen] 4 might look like, then it could stifle you, and that’s not something that I want to do.”
</blockquote>“But then you also need to think, ‘Okay, well, if there was a future story, what might that look like?’ So you have to have a rough sense of that. But I’d say in my personal experience, I try not to go too in the weeds on that because it can lock you into a Frozen 3 that you may want to change or make better. If you’re so rigid on what [Frozen] 4 might look like, then it could stifle you, and that’s not something that I want to do.”
Frozen 3 takes over theaters on November 24, 2027. Stay tuned here at Collider for more on the future of Frozen, with one year left until the series returns.
Frozen III
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