THE Ice Queen’s NEW KINGDOM
CAISSIE LEVY’S DRESSING ROOM IS, appropriately, freezing. The Broadway veteran sips a hot cup of coffee and builds a fortress of throw pillows around her to try to warm up before she takes the stage at the St. James Theater. There, she will stand in a makeshift ice palace and rehearse “Let It Go,” the Grammy-winning anthem from Disney’s animated blockbuster Frozen. The song closes Act I of Frozen: The Broadway Musical with the wry line, “The cold never bothered me anyway.”
With visions of the Lion King musical’s staggering $8.1 billion in global ticket sales dancing in its head, Disney is now trying to replicate that success with Frozen. Four years after its release, Frozen remains the highest-grossing animated movie of all time, with $1.3 billion at the worldwide box office. Families still wait three hours to ride the four-minute Frozen ride at Disney World.
The film earned fans by upending the princess fantasy that Disney had peddled for decades: after magical queen Elsa accidentally freezes her sister Anna’s heart, the “act of true
