Frozen‘s Kristen Bell and Jonathan Groff are teaming up again for another movie musical. Disney’s 2013 animated musical film Frozen became a pop-culture phenomenon, earning $400 million at the domestic box office. Frozen went on to spawn a stage adaptation on Broadway in 2018 and a film sequel in 2019, which became the highest-grossing animated film of all time. Frozen 2 continued the journeys of sisters Anna and Elsa, Olaf the Snowman, Kristoff the ice harvester, and Sven the reindeer. Bell, the voice of Anna, and Groff, who voiced Anna’s love interest Kristoff, are reuniting for another movie musical.
Deadline reports Bell and Groff will star in Molly and the Moon, an original musical film by How I Met Your Mother creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas. Bays and Thomas wrote and will direct the film, while Harvey Mason Jr. (Sing, the Pitch Perfect franchise) will serve as the executive music producer, Stephanie Diaz-Matos (The Get Down) will be the music supervisor and Nathan Larson (Hulu’s High Fidelity) will compose. Thomas told Deadline that the film is inspired by Thomas and his wife’s real-life experience with their newborn son, Elliot, who had a rare genetic condition that required surgery shortly after birth. The lullaby his wife would sing to their baby is used in the film. Read Thomas’ full quote below:
“The meter of Molly Moon is sort of the same as Elliot. Musicals are always about the first moments that prove why they are musicals. Kate, our lead character, the mother, is singing a lullaby to her pregnant belly and the camera pushes in on her pregnant belly and that is our entrance into a whole other world where we see a mysterious little girl in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean, looking up at the moon and hearing that song, hearing that lullaby come through the moon. It’s the moment you realize there’s this little soul, this life that wants to exist and be in the world and wants to reach the sound of that voice. She doesn’t know what it means or who it is. It just sounds like love, and she wants to reach it, and that’s sort of the moment that we connect the two worlds of our movie, the world of Molly and the real world that her parents are living in.”
Unlike Frozen, Molly and the Moon will be a live-action film and will see Bell as Kate and Groff as Molly’s dad Brian. Some of Bays’ and Thomas’ inspiration for the film is taken from Labyrinth, Where the Wild Things Are, Alice in Wonderland, and The Dark Crystal. While fans are hopeful for a Frozen 3, a third installment has not yet been confirmed. However, it’s exciting that Groff and Bell will star in another movie musical together—one that’s not animated this time. The pair have great chemistry that will surely translate from cartoon characters to real life.
