Frozen becomes 5th highest-grossing film of all time & announces live ice skating stage show

Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee 

Frozen has become the fifth highest-grossing movie of all time worldwide, after reaching nearly $1.22 billion. 

Directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee (pictured right), the animated musical is now the second-highest grossing movie for Disney, just behind The Avengers. The Marvel superhero epic is third on the overall list, after making $1.5 billion globally. 

Frozen has also overtaken Iron Man 3 in the chart. The Robert Downey Jr film took $1.2 billion during its run, and is now left in the sixth spot, while Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is in fourth with $1.34 billion. 

Frozen has already become the highest-grossing animated film of all time, surpassing Toy Story 3, which took $1.06 billion worldwide. 

Gossip: Disney's Frozen for stage adaptation?

Frozen, Disney's biggest animated success in almost 20 years, will one day become a Broadway musical, the company's CEO and chairman has revealed.

Speaking to Fortune magazine, Robert Iger confirmed that early discussions were taking place regarding a possible stage adaptation, though at present the project hasn't been given a set timeline. "We're not demanding speed," he said, "We're demanding excellence."

The film, loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale The Snow Queen, achieved the highest-grossing debut weekend of any Disney animation and has taken in excess of $669m (£407m) worldwide since November. It is being tipped to overtake The Lion King, Disney Animation's current bestseller with a worldwide gross of $987.5m. Adapting that for the stage has raked in more than $1bn on Broadway alone and last year, it took the title of Broadway's biggest seller with approximately $96.9m worth of receipts.

Interview: Disney’s Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, directors of Frozen

Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee
Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/2013 WireImage

Frozen is a new Disney musical animated movie which is currently breaking box office records all over the world. The film sledged into the #1 spot at the UK Box Office with a fantastic £4.7 million opening. Frozen broke records at the US Box office last week, becoming the biggest Thanksgiving opening of all time and the largest opening ever for Walt Disney Animation Studios taking $93.5 million for the five-day weekend. The film has now moved to #1 in US and has been #1 in Germany, Spain and France.

The voice cast is led by the queen of Broadway Idina Menzel as well as Kristen Bell, Glee’s Jonathan Groff, and original Book of Mormon cast member Josh Gad. A terrific score has been composed by husband-and-wife song writing team Robert Lopez (who co-wrote The Book of Mormon and Avenue Q) and Kristen Anderson-Lopez.

Inspired by The Snow Queen, Frozen tells the story of Sisters Elsa (Idina Menzel), who has magical icy powers, and Anna (Kristen Bell). Elsa manages to keep her powers hidden until Anna drops the bombshell that she is marrying a Prince who she has only known for a matter of hours. Understandably this infuriates Elsa (all this just happens to take place on her coronation day) and she loses control of her powers and casts a never ending winter over her kingdom before escaping to the mountains. Anna then sets off to track down her sister, befriending mountain man Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and larger than life snowman Olaf (Josh Gad) along the way.

Frozen is directed by Disney veteran Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee. Chris first joined Disney in 1978 as an animator whilst Jennifer, who joined Disney in 2011, is Disney’s first ever female director. Recently I spoke to Chris and Jennifer about the movie’s incredible score, why they decided to cast theatre stars over Hollywood names and whether they think Frozen could work as a Broadway or West End musical…

How are you feeling now that Frozen has been released and you’re breaking box office records all around the world? You must be relieved?!
Jennifer: Relieved is a good word!

Chris: Relieved is one, overwhelmed is another. We had left town before the final numbers even came in so it’s not like we had time to take it all in! I don’t know where we are [laughs]! I’m sure it will hit us later.

Jennifer: We’re ecstatic!

Chris: We’re thrilled that people are embracing the movie, everybody seems to respond to it in a different way and it’s been great to hear why people are loving it so much.