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FROZEN, 2013’s hottest holiday hit, was a link between Disney and Hans Christian Andersen that began in 1937.

What Walt Disney had in mind then was a bio-pic of the Danish author of classic fairy tales like “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” “The Little Mermaid” & “The Snow Queen.” But Disney was busy at the time preparing for the gala Hollywood premiere of SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, his first feature length, hand animated movie — and on whose success his studio’s future depended.

The Andersen project was still on Disney’s to-do list in March 1940 when he approached legendary Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn about a co-production deal where Goldwyn would film live action scenes about  Andersen’s life and Disney would create animated scenes from Andersen’s stories. The idea was good, but the timing was bad as the U.S. was on its way to joining World War II.

Twelve years later, Goldwyn produced the live-action bio-musical HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, starring Danny Kaye, which opened Nov. 25, 1952. Disney’s interest in other Andersen projects cooled and among those that went into the deep freeze was “The Snow Queen” — which resurfaced 61 years later as FROZEN.

Directed by Chris Buck (SURF’S UP) and Jennifer Lee (her feature directing debut), FROZEN was produced by Peter Del Vecho from a screenplay by Lee. Its voice stars included Kristen Bell & Idina Menzel.

Andersen’s “Queen” was a dark story, so it wasn’t easy to turn it into a movie people would enjoy. But giving the Snow Queen human qualities she didn’t originally have helped — as did making Elsa, the Snow Queen, and Anna, the story’s protagonist, sisters.

Compared to the original story, FROZEN still had snow and ice and a Queen, but otherwise it was Disney’s development of the material that made it work on screen. Its development began in the late ’90s with Glen Keane, a key animator on BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. But Keane moved on in 2002 to work on the project that became TANGLED.

Then Disney chairman & CEO Michael Eisner decided he liked the Snow Queen project and proposed Pixar’s John Lasseter to direct after Pixar and Disney had renewed their contract. But the renewal didn’t happen in January 2004 and the project was on ice again. Things thawed out when Bob Iger succeeded Eisner and in January ’06 Disney purchased Pixar for $7.4B.

Development heated up in ’08, when Lasseter brought back Buck. By early 2010, the project was on ice again because no one could really make the Snow Queen character work.

Then TANGLED opened Nov. 24, 2010 to $48.8M and did $591.8M worldwide. Inspired by TANGLED’s performance, Disney rewrote “Queen,” renamed it FROZEN and released it Nov. 27, 2013. FROZEN was a sizzling success with $1.3B in worldwide ticket sales.