Disney's Frozen Taken Off Ice

I guess that it is official, what with Disney setting a release date, although in this day and age, release dates are meaning less and less. Regardless, the studio's rendition of The Snow Queen will be coming out November 27th, 2013. It's nice to hear that their next hand-drawn production hasn't been relegated to development hell, since starting a new project fresh would have pushed any release into 2014, or possibly even 2015.

I also like that they are dipping into the MASSIVE trove of untouched fairy tales for this one, with one of Hans Christian Anderson's coolest stories. But, this is Disney, afterall, so simply calling it The Snow Queen isn't enough. The fact that the original name is well-known and totally badass-sounding makes no difference to a studio that needs to desperately excrete pop-culture bile from every pore in an attempt to prove that they are hip, and as such they are naming it Frozen. Their lameness truly knows no bounds.

There's very little information as yet. We have a single picture, of what is, I'm assuming, the Snow Queen herself, which you can see right here, and a very brief mention in the included video.

The Snow Queen is a dark tale, and I hope that they keep some of that in the film, as opposed to candy-coating the plot like they did for The Little Mermaid. In their defense, the laughable sexism of The Little Mermaid was probably best excised. I'd love to see some shades of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (which I'm sure would have been named Lunch With The Hunch by Disney's current executive team) or The Lion King, both of which were wonderfully dark in many places.

I shall withhold any judgment until I see who comprises the producing team. I hope that Lasseter et al. are directly involved.