Bob Iger confirmed on Good Morning America that “two stories” are currently in the works for the Frozen film series, saying coyly that there “might” be a Frozen 4 in the pipeline. Here’s how GMA itself reported:
In an interview with "Good Morning America" co-anchor Michael Strahan on Thursday, Disney CEO Bob Iger said, "Well, I'll give you a little surprise there, Michael. 'Frozen 3' is in the works and there might be a 'Frozen 4' in the works too."
"But I don't have much to say about those films right now," Iger continued. "But Jenn Lee, who created 'Frozen,' the original 'Frozen' and 'Frozen II,' is hard at work with her team at Disney Animation on not one but actually two stories."
I, like many, have high, specific hopes for what I think Frozen 3 can accomplish. Knowing that there are two movies in the works has me a little nervous. I like the Frozen series, and I like the prospect of there being a fourth film. That doesn’t mean I want to hear about it before the third is even finished.
You never like to see a series get ahead of itself. Struggles with a third film could result in a fourth being cancelled, and those struggles could very well result from a studio working too aggressively on multiple films at once. You don’t have to look too deeply into the states of Star Wars and Marvel to see examples of this within Disney. (To be fair, the freedom to build a story over multiple films can also enhance the overall execution.)
What about Frozen in the Parks?
This announcement comes at Disney is set to open World of Frozen, a new Frozen-themed land, at Hong Kong Disneyland. A new Frozen-themed land is also under construction at Walt Disney Studios Park at the Disneyland Paris resort. And Frozen Kingdom will be a part of the Fantasy Springs expansion at Tokyo DisneySea.
All of this has to have fans based in the United States asking: What about US?
Well, the first bit of good news is that if two more films are in the works, that has to be good news for prospects of a presence in the US parks. Here are the Disney franchises with their own lands in the United States:
Star Wars (Galaxy’s Edge, both coasts)
Toy Story (Toy Story Land, Hollywood Studios)
Cars (Cars Land, Disney California Adventure)
Marvel (Marvel Campus, Disney California Adventure)
Avatar (Pandora, Animal Kingdom)
The only one of these that doesn’t yet have four films is Avatar, which has a total of five planned. (Cars has 3 “Cars” films plus “Planes”). Pirates of the Caribbean is the most notable Disney franchise without its own land.
The other bit of good news is that know Disney is looking to expand parks on both the east and west coasts. We’ve already written about the changes coming to Dinoland USA. The prospects for Disneyland are a little tough because of space constraints, though Disney has used ambitious language in describing what they like to build out there.
Candidates for a New Frozen Land
Probably the best prospect for a serious Frozen expansion would be Magic Kingdom, where Disney has repeatedly confirmed plans to build “beyond” Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
Probably the biggest downside to focusing that expansion around Frozen is that it simply isn’t ambitious enough. With several Frozen lands already built, plus a Frozen presence in Epcot already, it feels like the most popular theme park in the world deserves a little more from it’s next huge expansion. New Fantasyland debuted in 2014, so it will be over a decade since Magic Kingdom saw serious work. I think this calls for something brand new.
Probably the best historical rebuttal to this would be Toy Story Land. Toy Story Playland opened at Walt Disney Studios Park in 2010, and later versions of the same concept opened in Hong Kong (2011) and Shanghai (2018). These versions were blown away by the Toy Story Land that opened in Hollywood Studios in 2018, though. It would be interesting to see if Disney could do something similar, taking the pre-existing Frozen land concepts to an entirely new level in the US.
There’s also a third option…expanding the Frozen presence at Epcot. If you head over to Google Maps, it certainly looks like there could be enough usable space for a serious expansion, though you’d potentially be working around the Test Track track and some large pre-existing structures.
Epcot has other issues, though. The impacts from 2020 resulted in a lot of cuts to future projects at the park (Play Pavilion, Mary Poppins attraction, Spaceship Earth update). That doesn’t mean Disney can’t do more work on the park though, and already we’ve got Imagination Pavilion rumors.
To me, Epcot faces sort of the opposite problems that Magic Kingdom faces. Magic Kingdom is already a fantastic park, and as the cornerstone of the Disney theme parks empire, it should get the absolute best treatment going forward. Epcot has become a sort of hodgepodge of ideas, and there’s so much potential in updating existing attractions and spaces that I just can’t see any need for an expansion of Frozen.
This leads me to the uncomfortable conclusions that although Disneyland resort is the worst candidate for a Frozen expansion from a physical perspective, it’s probably the best from every other perspective. It also only has a very limited Frozen presence currently.
When will we hear more?
Well, you’re not going to hear Disney come out and say “we aren’t building any new Frozen lands.” If nothing else, the possibility of an Epcot expansion will linger for years. We’ll certainly hear more about Magic Kingdom in the next 1-2 years, and I’d expect some concrete updates on the Disneyland expansion in that timeframe too.
In any case, I’m not holding my breath. When you hear that Disney is “turbocharging” their theme park expansions, that means at the very least they’ve got a lot of ideas brewing. Which ideas they settle on and when and where they decide to act upon them is very open at this point.