20 facts you might not know about Frozen

Hans Christian Andersen has had quite an impact on popular culture over the years. His stories include The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, and The Emperor’s New Clothes. Also among his writings is the story “The Snow Queen,” which is the basis for the story of Frozen.

The idea of adapting “The Snow Queen” goes so far back that Walt Disney himself is involved. He had the concept of doing a film about Andersen way back in 1937. The idea would have included animated versions of his stories, including “The Snow Queen.” However, the movie was scrapped because Disney got busy with propaganda during World War II.

“The Snow Queen” story was bandied about again in the late ‘90s. However, it got nixed in 2002. They thought about it again in the late 2000s, and it seemed like it might be stuck in perpetual purgatory forever. Then, Tangled hit in 2010, and they decided to give Frozen the green light.

The long, twisted path of Frozen meant a lot of changes to the script. Jennifer Lee got the sole screenwriter credit, but she shares the story credit with Chris Buck and Shane Morris. One notable change? Olaf went from being a villainous sidekick to Elsa into Anna’s comic relief sidekick.

Bell, who voices Anna, has said that she wanted to be in a Disney animated movie since she was a little kid. Part of the reason why she was hired was because of recordings of songs she had sung when she was younger. One of those songs was “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid.

Animated movies can take a while to get made, and Bell was notably pregnant once she was done with her initial recording sessions. However, pregnancy led to her voice deepening. As such, Bell had to go in and rerecord some of her dialogue, recording her lines roughly 20 times by her estimation.

Menzel clearly could handle the singing part of being Elsa. She is a Broadway legend. However, that apparently doesn’t guarantee anything. Menzel previously auditioned for Tangled but had not gotten a part. The second time was the charm with Frozen.

The animation team went all out to try and craft the look for the world of Frozen. This included a lot of books about Scandinavia and a trip to the Danish-themed city of Solvang in California. Ultimately, they settled on the landscape of Norway as the inspiration for the look. In fact, several of the animation artists traveled to Norway to get a first-hand look at the geography.

Norway wasn’t the only place that the animation team traveled to. Several animation and special effects folks went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for first-hand experience of walking, running, and falling into deep snow. Then, others went to one of those ice hotels in Quebec to check out how light refracted off its surface.

After all that time in development limbo, suddenly Frozen found itself up against the clock. Lee had to work quickly to finish her version of the screenplay, which led to a time crunch for the animators. The animation team only had 12 months to complete the movie, with a screenplay that wasn’t locked yet. For a feature-length animated film, that’s a quick turnaround.

Los Angeles is not known for its chilly weather. However, for the film's sound, the foley artists needed some snow to work with. They made that happen by getting 50 pounds of snow and ice delivered daily while the foley artists recorded all the snow and ice sounds for Frozen.

All those false starts were worth it. Frozen was a true phenomenon. It made over $400 million in North America and a whopping $1.28 billion worldwide. It was the highest-grossing movie of 2013.

Frozen was more than a big movie for 2013. It became the highest-grossing animated film ever. It would hold that record until 2019 when two movies beat it. Disney won’t complain. Both movies are Disney films, the highest of which is the Lion King remake.

The songs of Frozen proved to be quite popular. In 2014, they decided to release a “singalong” version of the movie in theaters. It featured the lyrics on the screen with a bouncing snowflake leading people in song.

The soundtrack for Frozen was almost as successful as the film itself. It topped the Billboard album charts for 13 non-consecutive weeks. Overall, it went triple platinum. Idina Menzel’s version of “Let It Go” rose to fifth on the singles charts and went platinum five times over.

Frozen was only nominated for two Academy Awards, but they were big ones. The movie was up for Best Animated Film, naturally, and for Best Original Song for “Let It Go.” Nobody went home unhappy. The movie won both awards.

“Let It Go” won an Oscar for Robert Lopez and his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez. It was big for both of them but particularly big for Robert. That win gave Lopez the vaunted EGOT — an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. He’s the youngest person to achieve an EGOT, only 39 at the time. He’s also the only person to win in every EGOT category more than once.

If you are up for Best Original Song at the Oscars, you are offered the opportunity to perform the song on the show. Naturally, Idina Menzel showed up to perform “Let It Go.” John Travolta introduced her, or at least, that was the plan. Inexplicably, Travolta had no idea what Menzel’s name was and instead presented her as “Adele Dazeem.”

In 2014, the year after Frozen came out, a spike in the name Elsa was noticed. A report by the group BabyCenter said it was the 88th most common baby name in 2014. Before that, the name had never appeared in the top 100. Elsa is also a name that will likely age better than people naming their kids Daenerys.

Of course, they made a Frozen II. Jennifer Lee was back writing the script, and she and Chris Buck co-directed once again. Critically, it wasn’t as well-received and didn’t win any Oscars. It did bring in a boatload of cash. Frozen II made 1.45 billion. The movie is now second at the all-time box office for an animated movie.