Perhaps if you’re a parent, it was only recently that the juggernaut that was “Let It Go” finally fell out of constant rotation in your household. Well, brace yourself now, because the beloved characters of Frozen will be back sooner than you may have anticipated: The first trailer for an upcoming 21-minute short film, Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, has arrived.
The titular snowman sidekick (Josh Gad) takes the lead this time around, in a holiday-themed story set not long after the end of the original film. As Entertainment Weekly reports, Olaf embarks on a mission to find the perfect family tradition for Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel) to adopt “in their first merry season together as non-estranged princesses.” Disney/Pixar exec John Lasseter also told EW that the film, along with other Frozen-related projects both past and forthcoming, will set the foundation for the upcoming feature-length sequel: “All of these projects really lead to Frozen 2 and this new story we’re creating that’s all, in a weird way, connected in the life of Anna and Elsa. You could sit and watch Olaf’s Frozen Adventure and Frozen 2 as one big marathon.”
And so it seems that Disney’s megahit could be well on its way to becoming the studio’s foremost Marvel-like animated universe. It’s hard to tell if this new short will capture its predecessor’s magic, though the snippet of new song “When We’re Together,” performed by Menzel and Bell in the trailer, features some lovely harmonizing. Plus, Olaf’s innocent description highlighting how odd some holiday traditions can be when you think about them long enough (“You cut down a tree, and then you dress its corpse with candles!”) is delightfully cute. Olaf’s Frozen Adventure will be released in front of Pixar’s Coco this November.
