The Snow Queen (cancelled CGI film)

The Snow Queen was an unreleased computer-animated fantasy adventure film that was to be produced by Universal Feature Animation. Based on the fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen, it is unrelated to the 2013 Walt Disney Animation Studios film Frozen, although it has a similar storyline.

Universal started developing a computer-animated film based on the Snow Queen fairy tale in 2001. 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 Audel 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 idea that would later become 2012's Quest.

Premise
Two teenagers, Gerda and Kai, embark on a journey to stop the Snow Queen from turning the world into ice.

Production
In June 2001, Universal Studios announced that they had bought the rights for the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale "The Snow Queen" to make a computer-animated film, via Universal Feature Animation to make this. Michael Wildshill was attached to direct the film from the script by Toy Story writers Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow.

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). In July 2004, Universal set the release date for December 20, 2006, which was, in May 2005, pushed back to 2007. 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.

In March 2007, 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, Walt Disney Animation Studios announced they were in development to make an unrelated film inspired by the Snow Queen fairy tale called Frozen, which was released in November 2013. Knowing the Universal version could not be completed before the Disney version, Audel dropped the project. Ironically, it was revealed that some of the elements and characters (including the protagonists Gerda and Kai) from Universal's cancelled Snow Queen film were reworked into the studio's 2015 animated film Paradoria, which was released to provide Universal with a brand franchise to rival Disney's Frozen franchise.

Scripts
Each script has a different storyline.

Video game
There was a video game planned for release alongside the film. Going by the same name as the film, it was planned to be a platforming adventure game. It was planned to be released around 2008, and the hopes were pretty high for the game. However, Universal pulled the plug for the film, so did the video game. No screenshots or video of gameplay were ever released.

Trivia
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Gallery
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