Disney is one of the biggest names in mass media. They own companies like Marvel, Hulu, and, by the summer of 2019, will own most of ABC as well. To think that the company with an estimated $98.6 billion net worth all started with a man and a mouse. The mouse certainly lives on, a staple in the lives of many, but Walt Disney passed away December 15, 1966. If only he could see the legacy he had created and the lives he had influenced, but who’s to say he never will?
One of the biggest conspiracies surrounding the company was the myth of a frozen head, locked away in a cryogenic chamber far below “The Pirates of the Caribbean” ride at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. The family of Disney has made multiple statements explaining that this is not the truth; Disney was actually cremated and is now buried along side his wife, daughter, and son-in-law at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. That didn’t stop the rumors. In fact, the release of “Frozen” in 2013 only added fuel to the fire.
Before the movie’s debut, all searches relating to ‘Disney Frozen’ involved the conspiracy of Walt waking from his cryogenic slumber decades in the future. Suddenly, the film is released and information about the dying conspiracy is not only harder to find, but also overshadowed by the picture’s success. There are people who believe that this was all to finally lay the rumors to rest.
Initial plans for Frozen began as early as 1943, a time when Walt Disney was still very much alive. The plans were scrapped for decades and then Disney passed away. The conspiracies grew, but the ideas for a movie with a plot did not resurface until the “Renaissance Era” of their films. It was only after the releases of “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast” that the plans for what would become a box-hit came back into production.
By that time conspiracies relating to Disney’s frozen head were replaced by new urban legends passed around. Flashforward to 2012 where there is a film with a definite plotline in production and, instead of naming it ¬ “The Snow Queen” after the novel it was inspired by, the company goes with “Frozen.”
Ed Catmull, President of Pixar, wrote in his 2014 book, Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. “Having the word princess in the title would lead moviegoers to think that the film was for girls only . . .”
Perhaps the movie’s name was just a marketing ploy, or, perhaps, it was the company’s way of telling the public to take the conspiracy of Walt Disney’s frozen head and ‘let it go.’