During her keynote at the London Film Festival, Disney’s CCO Jennifer Lee confirmed that her studio is working on the third cinematic chapter in the popular Frozen franchise. Although she didn’t reveal specific details about the third movie, she told the audience that she was blown away by what she has seen so far. “All I’ll say is that last week, they carved out time for me to work with the creative team on it. And I’m blown away,” Lee said.
“I’m so excited. I don’t know what I’m doing on it yet,” she added. “I might be doing nothing. I am doing what I do now, which is we work on every project as a team.”
Lee was a writer and director on the first two Frozen movies. Currently, Frozen II is one of the highest grossing animated movies of all time, having made over $1.45 billion at the global box office in 2019. (The film currently ranks no. 13 on the worldwide B.O. of all time.) The song “Into the Unknown” from the pic was nominated for Best Original Song, and the first film won two Oscars in 2014, including Best Animated Feature and Best Song (“Let It Go”). The two Frozen movies have made over $2.73 billion worldwide.
Lee also promoted the studio’s 100th-year release Wish, which will be released nationwide on Nov. 22. Directed by Fawn Veerasunthorn and Chris Buck, the movie features the voices of Chris Pine, Ariana DeBose, Angelique Cabral and Evan Peters. Lee is a write and executive producer on the movie which centers on a rebellious young heroine named Asha (DeBose) who fights a narcissistic wizard (Pine) with the aid of a wishing star. Wish features original songs by Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Julia Michaels.
Lee also shared her experiences of being bullied in school and how Disney’s Cinderella helped her find her way when she was a young girl. “In middle school, I was very severely bullied,” she recalled. “I had a very, very difficult three years, and I would come home and put Cinderella on when I would do homework, because to me, it seemed like she was so mistreated and she held on to herself. For anyone who’s gone through that, it’s hard. You believe the noise, and she never did. … For a lot of us probably Disney was an escape, but it was also someplace telling you that there was always something better to come.”
You can read all about the making of Wish in our next issue (Issue No. 335) which comes out the first week in November. Jennifer Lee will receive Animation Magazine’s Hall of Fame award at the 2023 edition of the World Animation Summit in Los Angeles on Wednesday Nov. 1 at The Garland. For more info, visit animationmagazine.net/summit.
Sources: Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter
Watch the record-breaking trailer for Wish below:
