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The 10-year, tangled history of Disney trying to get another Tangled movie (especially after the creators kept saying 'no')
Disney's Tangled movie franchise has a tangled history when it comes to a sequel.
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Disney has been trying to make another Tangled movie for at least 10 years, and they seem to be finally close to finding someone who will say yes. Earlier this week Variety's Rebecca Rubin reported that Disney was courting The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey to get a long-gestating live-action remake going. This comes as Disney is going all-in on theatrical sequels to its popular Disney animated films, and also full-scale reboots as live-action/CGI hybrids.
That is a marked change from the past when sequels to Disney animated hits were viewed internally as less than, leading them to release them direct-to-video or do a TV series instead of a proper sequel movie. You see this modern strategy with the Frozen movie and its sequels, and the Moana movie and its sequels (with a live-action version being filmed now). But as it turns out, Disney has been trying for a decade to get a second Tangled film - but the makers of the original Tangled kept saying 'no.'
Why there was never a Tangled movie sequel
"Well Tangled, there was a desire to somehow take it into a filmic sequel. But the directors weren’t really interested in doing that," Tangled producer Ray Conli said to Den of Geek in 2015. "Her hair was gone! There you go!"
In 2014, Conli told The Australian that Disney "heavily pushed" Walt Disney Animation to do a Tangled sequel, and at one point named Tangled directors Nathan Greno and Byron Howard specifically as not being "interested." The duo did create a short film, but have stuck to their guns in resisting calls for a sequel to the animated movie.
What Disney did after Walt Disney Animation Studios kept refusing to do Tangled 2
After not being able to get Walt Disney Animation to create a Tangled sequel, in 2017 Disney eventually convinced the separate Disney Television Animation department to create a TV series called Tangled: Before Ever After - with a feature-length series premiere episode to launch the series. In 2020, just as that animated TV series ended, Disney confirmed they were beginning to develop a live-action movie based on Tangled. At the time, Disney had a screenwriter, and were looking for a director.
Now, here in December 2024, Disney has a new screenwriter and is close to finally getting that director in the form of Gracey. Consider Disney the Flynn Rider in all of this, and a serious director the Rapunzel of it all.
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