Lady Cluck wrote:
Walt topped pigs with pigs on multiple occasions, as has the Disney company in general.
Disney's Divinity wrote:
I agree, considering their comeback has been with a fairytale princess film 3 times now (first
Cinderella, then
The Little Mermaid, and now
Frozen).
Fflewduur wrote:
And 2018 is four years away.
I personally don't think that makes any difference at all.
Another fairytale princess film failed to save a future for hand-drawn animation at the studio. Still another (coming out in DE later this year) cost twice as much as the features immediately preceding, received very mixed reviews, was financially unsuccessful (to the extent that the studio laid off a bunch of animators, wrote off its first loss in a decade, and the film was not released again in Walt’s lifetime).
Those aforementioned films were all distanced by at least a dozen years and as much as nearly 40. And
Frozen 2 is not as to
Frozen as
Cinderella is to
Snow White because we’ve never seen Disney do theatrically released animated feature *sequels*…with the exception of projects produced by DisneyToon, which simply aren’t up to WDFA (now WDAS) quality, and the last
Pooh film, which was a nice little film that tanked at the box office (probably in no small part due to the plethora of DisneyToon theatrically released sequels that preceded it).
The success of a sequel is going to depend on a lot things: a good story, a good score, another stand-out signature tune perhaps…and something more. If anyone really knew what it took to make a successful film, much less a film franchise, the industry would be a very different place.
Four years is a long time. If
Frozen is as big as it gets in this current upward trend in quality and reception, if things start a downhill slide with
BH6 and keep heading down from there,
Frozen 2 could just be a
Lilo-ish bright spot amid a cycle of lesser efforts—and would get less credit for being a retread.
Heck, if the schedule holds true, we know the next nine DWA films coming down the pike between now and F2, and half of those are sequels: the animated franchise thing could easily go stale for audiences between now and then if
The Croods 2 and
The Penguins of Madagascar and
Kung Fu Panda 3 are as lame as they might be.
It’s just way too early to begin to judge what sort of success a
Frozen follow-up might be.