Disney's Frozen movies have broken multiple box office records - here's every one of them. The House of Mouse scored an important hit when it adapted Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Little Mermaid into an animated musical in 1989, ushering in the Disney Animation renaissance of the '90s and getting the studio's animation department back on track from both a critical and financial standpoint. Twenty-four years later, the studio released another project inspired by Andersen's writing (specifically, his story The Snow Queen) in the form of Frozen, and it likewise managed to exceed even the studio's rosier expectations.
Six years, $1.28 billion, and two Oscar wins later, the studio (naturally) released a sequel in the form of Frozen II, having kept the franchise alive and well in the meantime with a short theatrical sequel (Frozen Fever), a winter holiday-themed special (Olaf's Frozen Adventure), and even a stage musical adaptation on Broadway. Reviews were less glowing for Frozen II than they'd been for the first movie, but it was still generally well-liked and - more importantly to Disney from a business perspective - managed to sur its predecessor's worldwide gross, taking home a whopping $1.45 billion.
As one might've guessed, the Frozen films have broken a few records on their way to a combined $2.73 billion take. At the time of its release, the original Frozen overtook Toy Story 3 to become the top-grossing animated movie of all time and still holds the #3 spot to this day, just behind Frozen II and The Lion King CGI remake. It similarly set a new benchmark for musicals at the box office in 2013 (with, again, only Frozen II and The Lion King 2019 having ed it since then) and became the highest-grossing movie domestically to feature a woman director (co-helmer Jennifer Lee), prior to the release of Wonder Woman four years later.
Since The Lion King remake had only broken Frozen's records for animated features and musicals a few months earlier, Frozen II was unable to do either of those things when it premiered in November 2019. It did, however, enjoy the all-time biggest worldwide opening weekend for an animated film ($358.5 million), readily eclipsing the previous record set by Toy Story 4 ($244.5 million) and then subsequently broken by The Lion King ($245.9 million) earlier that same year. The Frozen sequel eventually found its way into the #3 spot among the top-grossing movies of 2019 overall, behind The Lion King and Avengers: Endgame.
With those types of returns, most people assume Frozen 3 isn't so much a question of if as when. Back in June, Frozen II story director Marc Smith said the Mouse House has yet to seriously broach the subject, but it's probably too soon for that anyway. As mentioned earlier, it took six years for Frozen II to become a reality after the original film opened, and a similar turnaround means Frozen 3 wouldn't arrive until Fall 2025, even if Disney were to green-light it within the next 12-24 months. Still, at this stage, a journey back to Arendelle, the Enchanted Forest, and the unexplored realms of the Frozen universe appears more likely than not to (eventually) happen.
