10 Movies That Escaped Development Hell (And Were Worth The Wait)
8. Frozen
Believe it or not, Disney had actually been toying with an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's 1844 fairy tale "The Snow Queen" since the 1940s, originally opting for a hybrid of live-action and animation, chronicling Andersen's life while also adapting his most famous tales.
Disney struggled to adapt The Snow Queen in particular, and so the ambitious project stalled for literally decades, until Disney made an attempt at a straight animated adaptation of The Snow Queen in the late '90s.
Numerous subsequent attempts failed to pick up traction with the Disney brass, even with Josh Gad already being hired to play Olaf, and the film - then called Anna and the Snow Queen - was shelved yet again in 2010.
But in late 2011, it was resurrected as Frozen following the success of Tangled, though production was extremely tough, with the script and songs being retooled even mere months before its November 2013 release.
Even so, Frozen went on to become a critical success and unprecedented pop-culture phenomenon, revitalising general interest in the Disney princess movie in the process.