Jun 18, 2013

The Uncanny Resemblance Between Disney's "Frozen" Teaser And A 2009 Student Animation



Shortly after posting the teaser to Disney's upcoming Frozen feature earlier today, it was brought to our attention by a concerned individual that there were some striking similarities between the teaser and a short written, produced and directed by Kelly Wilson in 2009 called The Snowman, which featured an identical scenario, down to the resolution. While we initially wrote it off as coincidence, after comparing the two shorts closely it did raise some suspicion as to whether some ideas were borrowed without Wilson's knowledge.


We initially assumed that Frozen's scenario might simply be based off of an event that happened in the fairy tale it was based off of, but following some research about the Danish fairy tale we realized that there was no comic relief snowman in the original story (The Snow Queen), just a reindeer that accompanies the ice princess. We did a comparison between the two plots, and if you watch the shorts you can judge for yourself whether Disney might have lifted some ideas from the student animator. Considering Disney's history of borrowing ideas, like the infamous Lion King/Kimba The Lion controversy, we wouldn't be terribly surprised.

  • Both shorts feature a clumsy snowman that loses his nose, which lands on a frozen lake that gets the attention of a carrot eating creature. Rabbits in The Snowman, a reindeer in Frozen.
  • In both shorts the carrot lands on a frozen lake, and a struggle ensues in which the snowman and creature struggle to get the carrot back.
  • Both shorts feature the creature getting the carrot instead of the snowman, nearly eating it, and changing their mind last minute before handing it back to the snowman.

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