7 things we learned during Disney's Frozen 2 press event

7 things we learned during Disney’s Frozen 2 press event

From the Academy Award®-winning team—directors Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck, and producer Peter Del Vecho—and featuring the voices of Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, Jonathan Groff and Josh Gad, and the music of Oscar®-winning songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “Frozen 2” opens in U.S. theaters on Nov. 22, 2019.©2019 Disney. All Rights Reserved. /

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Magical and larger than life, Elsa is the perfect mythic character—but she can’t help but wonder why she was born with powers. What truths about the past await Elsa as she ventures into the unknown to the enchanted forests and dark seas beyond Arendelle? Featuring Idina Menzel as the voice of Elsa, Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “Frozen 2” opens on Nov. 22, 2019. © 2019 Disney. All Rights Reserved. /

“Into the Unknown” is not the typical “I want” song

Attendees of this year’s D23 Expo got to hear two of seven new songs for Frozen 2, penned by Academy Award-winning songwriting team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. The press event expanded on that by premiering an additional song involving Olaf, but it was obvious that Elsa’s song, “Into the Unknown,” is the film’s scene-stealer.

As executive music producer Tom MacDougall explained, “Into the Unknown” is not a typical “I want” song common to Disney movies, wherein a character lays out their motivations and dreams with the goal of changing who they are by the end. “The music is there to entertain,” MacDougall said, “but for our movies, they’re entertainment informed.”

This puts the burden on the songwriters, whose goal becomes to “make the movie better through music.” Recording out of their Brooklyn studio, the Lopezes recorded their own versions of the song and sent it to Disney for consideration. “They ask, how do you musicalize that?” MacDougall added. “So they might take some of the words from the script or just the single idea of what the song’s trying to accomplish and put it to music.”

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