The original ending planned for Disney’s "Frozen" was nothing like how it turned out, producer Peter Del Vecho revealed this week.
Del Vecho told Entertainment Weekly the original ending included an army of snow monsters and Elsa as more of a villainous character who froze her own heart after being left at the altar on her wedding day.
Additionally, in the original movie script based on the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, Elsa and Anna aren’t sisters, which makes Elsa more of a straightforward villain. In the unused version, Elsa does get redemption at the end of the movie by deciding to use her powers for good, but she wasn’t a sympathetic character, so writers and producers decided to change the story to get viewers to connect more with her, Del Vecho told EW.
Del Vecho and "Frozen" director Jennifer Lee went back to the drawing board to figure out how to make viewers care that Elsa turns from evil to good, and they ended up with sisters who showed the difference between acting out of love and fear.
Elsa went from being a villain to being a heroine afraid to use her powers, and the highest-grossing animated movie ever made found the way to millions of kids’ hearts through an ice queen and one of the most popular Disney heroines of all time.
Del Vecho told EW that Disney animation chief Ed Catmull told Lee, “If you can make that ending pay off and we can really feel it, I think we’ll have a successful film. And if you don’t ... we’ll have nothing.”
One emotion-fueled Elsa-blizzard later, a "Frozen" blockbuster with the perfect ending was born.
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