What is Disney’s mysterious Frozen project?

You might have heard the news yesterday that Disney had announced a release date for an animated film titled FROZEN. No additional details were given but the date – November 27th, 2013 – led many to believe it was a new title given to Pixar’s “dinosaurs” project, which originally held that same date. But that’s not actually the case.

It seems Pixar’s dinosaurs project (which follows an alternate reality when dinosaurs never became extinct and live alongside humans) will move to an as-yet-unannounced date and FROZEN is a new project. Well, not really new. It’s actually been in development since 2002.

FROZEN is actually a relaunched version of THE SNOW QUEEN, a film Disney animation has been working on for almost 10 years. The project, like TANGLED before it, had been shelved a number of times but now looks to be getting rebooted for a 2013 release.

The film, based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, was originally intended to be Disney’s next hand-drawn animated project after THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG and WINNIE THE POOH but whether this renamed version will still be hand-drawn remains to be seen (at one time RAPUNZEL was set to be hand-drawn before getting retitled TANGLED and going CGI).

Alan Menken (THE LITTLE MERMAID) was attached to write new music back in 2009 but it’s unclear if he’s still working on the project.