Ahead of the L.A. premiere of Frozen 2, the principal cast of the Disney animated movie musical—Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, Jonathan Groff, and Josh Gad—stopped by Jimmy Kimmel LIVE! to talk about the sequel to the global hit Frozen, which took the world by storm in 2013.
“It’s six years in the making, though,” Bell told Kimmel. And as the sequel, Bell says this next movie “has matured with its audience.”
The movie, directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, who penned the screenplay to the original film and the Tony-nominated book to the subsequent Broadway stage adaptation, once again features songs by Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez. The duo won an Oscar for Best Original Song for “Let It Go,” sung by Menzel as Queen Elsa in the original film. Lopez is an EGOT winner, having won Tony Awards for his work on Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon. The pair were Tony-nominated for their original score of Frozen on Broadway.
For the new film, they have a full score of new songs, including “this amazing ’80s jam” as a solo for Groff’s character Kristoff.
Frozen earned $1.276 billion at the global box office and is the highest-grossing animated film of all time. “When we watched it, we felt like, ‘Oh wow, we broke a mold. We made a move about familial love and self love instead of romantic love,’” Bell said, “and we were really proud of the film, and then… later, we were checking the box office going, ‘Wow that's really hangin on.’”
Kids, teens, families were all obsessed with Frozen. So what was the movie these stars were obsessed with as kids?
“I was obsessed with My Fair Lady, ” Bell said—a theatre kid at heart. “I watched it over and over again, and I would sing into the mirror, ‘Just you wait ’Enry ’Iggins, just you wait.’”
“Mine was Annie—the Broadway show and then the movies,” Menzel said. “I wanted to audition, and my mom didn’t believe in me being a working kid, so we would fight about it a lot.”
“Definitely The Wizard of Oz,” said Groff. “I was Dorothy in our production that we did in my dad's barn.”
“Mine was The Goonies. I watched that movie about 500 times, and I wanted to be Chunk so badly,” said Gad.
Come November 22, when Frozen 2 hits theatres nationwide, audiences will have another option for a film to watch over and over.
