‘Frozen’ Director Admits She Needed to Axe Olaf

Tens of millions of households may not ever have constructed that snowman, if an govt’s early artistic word on the Disney blockbuster “Frozen” had been adopted.

Jennfier Lee, the chief artistic officer of Walt Disney Animation and the co-director of “Frozen,” confessed that the beloved character Olaf — a plucky snowman who accompanies his human associates on a journey to avoid wasting their matriarch — was the very first thing she wished to slash from the 2013 venture when she got here on board.

Lee accepted the Distinguished Storyteller Award from the Los Angeles Press Membership on Sunday night time on the fifteenth annual Arts and Leisure Journalism Awards, an honor introduced to her by the voice of Olaf himself, actor Josh Gad.

“Josh is Olaf,” Lee stated, including that she was not talking metaphorically. She defined that she got here onto “Frozen” after the venture was already in improvement. After viewing an early lower, Lee confessed that “My first word was, ‘kill the snowman.’”

Fortunately, a “sneaky” employees animator had labored out a three-page script therapy with Gad in thoughts after he impressed filmmakers with a late night time TV look. Lee discovered him irresistible, and the remainder is field workplace historical past.

“Frozen” would go on to win two Academy Awards and gross over $1.2 billion on the worldwide field workplace.

In her speech, through which she acknowledged fellow L.A. Press Membership honorees like Ryan Seacrest and media billionaire Byron Allen, she informed Gad she seemed ahead to many extra artistic adventures collectively.

“And no,” she informed the viewers of journalists, “that isn’t an announcement.”