Jennifer Lee Leaves As Disney Animation Chief To Focus On ‘Frozen’ Sequels, Jared Bush Taking Over
Major corporate news coming out of Disney today. Jennifer Lee, who’s been heading the Disney Animation division for six years, is leaving her position to focus on writing and directing the next two Frozen movies full-time, she announced via a letter to employees this morning. Jared Bush is to succeed her as Chief Creative Officer, reporting directly to Disney Entertainment chief Alan Bergman.
For now, Disney is spinning it as a personal decision and not a demotion, but the division has been under scrutiny for a while. Though they had a massive (streaming) hit with 2021’s Encanto, the two latest Walt Disney Animation tentpoles, Strange World and Wish, were complete misfires, both critically and box office-wise. The company is hoping to turn the ship around with this November’s Moana 2, which was repurposed from its original concept of a Disney Plus animated series. It will now receive a full-fledged theatrical release on Nov. 27; it was also announced today that it will be released on IMAX.
Bush wrote the original Moana and co-wrote the sequel. He and Lee are EPs on the project. The timing certainly suggests that this was a personal decision. If it was coming from the Disney upper ranks, they would have certainly waited for Moana 2 to come out, to either push her aside so she can focus on delivering better films rather than overseeing poorer ones or to let her bow out with a win, so she can make even better films next.
The third Frozen film was announced a few months after Bob Iger returned as CEO of the company. Lee herself announced during the London Film Festival last year that a fourth film was also in early development at the studio. Little is known about that one. For now, the threequel has been set for November 2027, and already showed some concept art at this year’s D23 Expo.
Jared Bush also co-directed and co-wrote 2016’s billion-dollar hit Zootopia, and is directing its sequel, which bows in theaters in the fall of 2015.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
