Bostonia feature: BU Alum, Producer of Frozen and Frozen II, Calls Reaction to Franchise “Amazing” and “Humbling”
This article was originally published in Bostonia, BU’s alumni magazine, on November 20, 2019. By Amy Laskowski.
I’m a BU Today writer and the mom of a three-year-old. My daughter was Elsa for Halloween, we listen to “Let It Go” 238 times a week—a conservative estimate—and just this morning she had a waffle stamped with Elsa’s face. Does this sound familiar to anyone?
The man to thank (or curse?) is BU alum and Quincy, Mass., native Peter Del Vecho (CFA’80), the producer of Frozen (2013) and Frozen II, which comes out Friday, November 22. Del Vecho says even his team, which includes Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, directors of both films, did not anticipate the franchise becoming the mega phenomenon it has.
When the first film came out, “it was no longer our movie, the world had made it its own,” he emailed in the midst of a hectic press tour late Tuesday night. “It was amazing to watch and quite humbling. We can only hope the world embraces Frozen II the same way.”
Frozen II sees Queen Elsa (again voiced by Idina Menzel, who belts out another addictive ballad) traveling north to a mythical place called Ahtohallan to discover the origins of her powers and find out more about the death of her parents. Joining her on the trip from Arendelle are her sister, Anna (Kristen Bell), Anna’s beau, Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), and snowman Olaf (Josh Gad). With mostly positive reviews, the film has received an 81 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Variety calls it “anything but a mindless remake,” and applauds its pushing “girl-power themes” even further than the original.
For Frozen, Del Vecho won both an Academy Award for Best Animated Film and a Producers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures. Frozen also garnered an Academy Award for Best Original Song (“Let It Go”), as well as a Golden Globe and a BAFTA award. The film is the second highest grossing animated film of all time, earning $1.27 billion at the box office. According to Variety, industry experts expect Frozen II to take home more than $100 million this opening weekend, giving it a jump on the original.
Del Vecho says the idea for a sequel came about a year and a half after the first movie. Disney was working on the short Frozen Fever and “in animation we began seeing the characters come alive again and realized we had missed them,” he says. At the same time, he kept getting asked the same questions during talks with students and artists: “How did Elsa get her powers?” “What is she meant to do with them?” “Why was Anna born the way she was?” “Where were their parents going when their ship went down?” When he returned to the studio, he realized Buck and Lee had the same thoughts, and that’s when they decided they had enough for a sequel.