Frozen co-director Jennifer Lee has admitted that she initially wanted to get rid of Olaf from Disney’s mega-hit animated movie, thus ending the dreams of millions of kids wanting to build snowmen before they had even begun.
The chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation came onboard the 2013 film when it was already in development and revealed that she was initially not convinced by the lovable and winningly positive snowman who helps Anna (Kristen Bell) save her sister Elsa (Idina Menzel).
Lee was honoured with the Distinguished Storyteller Award at the Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday night, which is where she made the confession upon being presented the award by Olaf himself, actor Josh Gad.
‘Josh is Olaf,’ she began, saying that she was not speaking metaphorically as she praised his iconic voice performance.
According to Variety, the director then explained that after seeing one of the early cuts of the film, her ‘first’ bit of (quite brutal) feedback was: ‘Kill the snowman.’
However, Josh managed to win over the filmmaker with his performance as the hilarious sidekick created by Elsa and Anna in their childhood, and the rest is film history.
