The Snow Queen (cancelled CGI film)

The Snow Queen was an unreleased computer-animated fantasy adventure film produced by Universal Feature Animation from 2001 until its cancellation in 2007. Based on the fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen, it was set to be directed by Audel LaRoque and written by LaRoque, Joel Cohen, Alec Sokolow and James Gunn from a story by LaRoque and Michael Wildshill (who was also executive producing the film alongside Steve Samono), and was to star the voices of Spencer Locke, Josh Hutcherson, Christine Baranski, Bill Murray, Martin Short, Julie Andrews, and Steve Zahn.

The film was originally planned for a December 2006 release by Universal Pictures, but was delayed to 2007. In March 2006, Universal moved the film to 2008, and announced LaRoque as the director of Computeropolis 2, which he was directing concurrently with The Snow Queen. However, in March 2007, the project was abandoned by Universal due to script problems, and LaRoque announced that he was no longer working on the project, and would instead work on an original idea that would later become 2012's Quest. A video game tie-in with Radical Entertainment was also canceled.

After The Snow Queen ' s cancellation, some of the characters and elements from this film were later re-integrated into Quest as well as Universal's 2015 animated feature Paradoria, which would spawn a media franchise to compete against Walt Disney Animation Studios' Snow Queen-inspired franchise, Frozen.

Premise
Two children, Gerda (Spencer Locke) and Kai (Josh Hutcherson), embark on a journey to stop the Snow Queen (Christine Baranski) from turning the world into ice.

Voice cast

 * Spencer Locke as Gerda
 * Josh Hutcherson as Kai
 * Christine Baranski as The Snow Queen
 * Bill Murray
 * Martin Short
 * Julie Andrews
 * Steve Zahn

Production
The rights to the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale "The Snow Queen" had reportedly been offered to Multimedia Animation in the early 1990s but were turned down. In June 2001, Universal Studios, who previously dubbed the 1957 Soviet animated Snow Queen film, announced that they were adapting "The Snow Queen" into a computer-animated film, via Universal Feature Animation to make this, with its CEO Michael Wildshill attached to direct the film from the script by Toy Story writers Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow. During that time, Universal Animation's rival studio Walt Disney Feature Animation was also attempting to adapt The Snow Queen into an animated film for many years, but had reportedly been in limbo.

In April 2002, James Gunn, the writer of Scooby-Doo (2002), was hired to do the re-writes for the script. By May 2003, the first draft was completed. In April 2004, it was reported that Audel LaRoque had been set to direct the feature, as Wildshill left to direct Woo La La (then titled Nippon) but was still involved in The Snow Queen as an executive producer. LaRoque also described the project as "a kid-friendly Ico", as he and Wildshill cited the video game Ico as an inspiration for the film's characters and elements when Wildshill saw his wife Star play Ico on the PlayStation 2, in which the game's characters reminded Wildshill of The Snow Queen.

In July 2004, Universal set the release date for December 20, 2006, which was, in May 2005, pushed back to 2007. In August 2004, the film's cast was announced; Spencer Locke and Josh Hutcherson joined as the protagonists Gerda and Kai, and Christine Baranski as antagonist the Snow Queen. Other casting includes Bill Murray, Martin Short, Julie Andrews, and Steve Zahn. In March 2006, Universal then moved the film to 2008, and announcing LaRoque as the director of Computeropolis 2 (known as Computeropolis 2: The Error of Doom at the time), which he was directing concurrently with The Snow Queen. It was reportedly announced that Me & Mobo director Steve Samono was negotiating to take over as director from LaRoque, but had not decided yet. However, Samono later stated that he was still involved with the project. On December 12, 2006, LaRoque revealed an "animation test" footage, about which he said, "It's just something that kind of represents what we want to do. I couldn't be more excited by how it turned out."

Other staff included associate producer Amy McNeill, French composer Bruno Coulais, editor Rob Carpenter, artist/designers Yarrow Cheney, John France, Shane Prigmore and Shannon Tindle, and storyboard artists Jim Anderson and Ash Brannon.

Cancellation and legacy
In March 2007, three months after the test footage, Universal announced that the production of The Snow Queen was ultimately shut down, due to having problems with the script. LaRoque, who was unhappy about this, said about the film's cancellation, "The story wasn't working that right. We're out of ideas now, so we killed The Snow Queen." Not only because The Snow Queen was suffering script issues, but it is also because LaRoque would instead work on an idea that would later become Quest. During the production of Quest for a 2012 release, LaRoque expressed interest of reviving The Snow Queen, which did not last very long, however. In December 2011, Disney announced they were in development to make an unrelated film called Frozen inspired by the Snow Queen fairy tale, which was released in November 2013. Knowing the Universal version could not be completed before the Disney version, Audel dropped the project.

Following the cancellation of The Snow Queen, some of the elements and characters from the film were reused into Quest as well as Paradoria, which was released in 2015 to provide Universal with a brand franchise to rival Disney's Frozen franchise. The film's antagonist, the titular Snow Queen, was loosely reworked into Mola, the antagonist of Quest, while the protagonists Gerda and Kai were reworked into Jamo and Keena from Paradoria. In addition, Universal released the 2012 Russian computer-animated film adaptation of The Snow Queen in France, which was drawn comparisons by many reviews between it and Disney's Frozen.

As with Gerda and Kai being reworked into Jamo and Keena from Paradoria, Michael Wildshill later revealed that their own version of The Snow Queen served as the basis for Paradoria, even though the titular Snow Queen was reworked into Mola from Quest. Additionally, Universal animator Ash Brannon, who was involved in the Universal Snow Queen film before its cancellation, also revealed that he turned over a couple of elements from this film to Chris Buck (whom Brandon co-directed with on Sony Pictures Animation's Oscar-nominated 2007 film Surf's Up) for his version of The Snow Queen as one of the several ideas to then-Disney Animation chief creative officer John Lasseter back in September 2008, which eventually became Frozen; ironically, during that time, Steve Samono attempted to pitch Paradoria to Disney Animation due to it having Disney-like elements, but Lasseter turned it down due to "creative difficulties," prompting Samono to return to Universal to pitch Paradoria there, which was eventually green-lit by Wildshill. As a result, many believe that the unproduced Universal version of The Snow Queen served as the basis for not only Paradoria, but also Disney's Frozen.

For many years, little was known about Universal's own animated adaptation of The Snow Queen. Only an animation test footage and a few concept art of the film were released, although LaRoque revealed some information about it. In September 2015, LaRoque released three different scripts of The Snow Queen online; each script has a different storyline. The following month, a few more animation test footage of this film (as well as the December 2006 footage) were released by Universal Animation Studios on YouTube.

Video game
In September 2004, Universal Studios signed a deal with Radical Entertainment to develop video game tie-ins based on the studio's upcoming Universal Feature Animation films including The Snow Queen, which was expected for a release on PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube in Q4 2006 at the time. Going by the same name as the film, it was planned to be a platforming adventure game for a release in 2008. However, Universal pulled the plug for the film, so did the video game.

Trivia

 * Aside from the cancelled film and game, this film's protagonists Gerda and Kai were both planned to be included in Fighting Royale 2 as two of the characters discovered in the files.

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