Nathan Greno, who directed the animated film Tangled, just revealed why a sequel never materialized.
In an interview with The Direct, Greno admitted that he tried to come up with a strong framework for a potential Tangled 2. He and the other filmmakers got together “off-site” and had discussions that lasted for hours. In the end, though, they “couldn’t find a story worth telling.”
“We actually did an off-site at Disney, and we got the original team together, and we really all talked about it for hours, and we kind of walked away saying, ‘We couldn’t find a story worth telling.'”
Greno compared the situation to Pinocchio and Beauty and the Beast. When the wooden puppet becomes a real boy, “what else is there to say? Once the Beast becomes a human, what else is there to say?”
The director is not opposed to making sequels, but Tangled, which centers on the classic fairytale character Rapunzel and grossed $592 million at the box office, introduced “tricky” plot-related obstacles that he felt were impossible to overcome.
“Again, I’m not against sequels. There was, I will say, after we finished Tangled…It’s a tricky place because I’ll put it this way: once Pinocchio becomes a real boy, what else is there to say? Once the Beast becomes a human, what else is there to say?”
Greno and his co-director Byron Howard did work on a short film that takes place after Tangled and centers on Rapunzel and Flynn Rider’s wedding.
Tangled Ever After felt like the most “natural” follow-up because fans had been telling him they wanted to see the wedding. But aside from giving fans what they wanted via Tangled Ever After, a full-length feature film wasn’t in the cards.
“There was a short that we did the wedding because people come and ask, like, ‘Where’s the wedding?’ So we did do the wedding because that felt natural. But in general, yeah, there just wasn’t a story that I could find.”
Tangled producer Roy Conli previously told Den of Geek that Greno and Howard “weren’t really interested” in a sequel and noted that it would’ve been hard to tell another story about a character with really long blonde hair when the first film ended with Rapunzel’s hair being cut short and turning brown. “Her hair was gone!” Conli exclaimed.
Disney also released the TV movie Tangled: Before Ever After and the series Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure, but Greno had no involvement.
After directing Tangled, the filmmaker worked on other Disney films, including Big Hero 6, Zootopia and Moana. His latest project, the animated film Swapped with Sinners star Michael B. Jordan, Juno Temple and Tracy Morgan, is about to be released on Netflix on May 1.
Even though Tangled 2 never materialized, Disney hasn’t given up on the franchise, as Tangled is receiving the live-action treatment, similar to other animated films that the Mickey Mouse company has remade, including The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Snow White and Lilo & Stitch.
A live-action Moana will be released in theaters on July 10, followed by Lilo & Stitch 2 in 2028.
A live-action Tangled film almost never happened after Snow White underperformed at the box office, but Lilo & Stitch’s performance turned everything around, and Teagan Croft, Milo Manheim and Kathryn Hahn were eventually cast as Rapunzel, Flynn Rider and Mother Gothel, respectively. Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi and Donna Murphy voiced these characters in the original animated film.
Michael Gracey will be directing the live-action Tangled remake instead of Greno, who also told The Direct that he’s not aware of what approach the filmmakers will be taking, so he refrained from giving an opinion on the endeavor.
“I’m not sure the approach. We’ve seen these remakes where they kind of stick to the original, and we’ve seen things where they kind of do something else. There’s a lot of different approaches with these remakes.”
Disney’s Tangled remake does not have a release date yet, but production will get underway in June.
Release Date
November 24, 2010
Runtime
100 minutes
Director
Byron Howard, Nathan Greno