Exclusive: why Disney never made Tangled 2

This story contains a spoiler for Tangled.

For the past few years, as Walt Disney Animation Studios has continued its remarkable run of recent success, rumors of sequels to its films have gathered momentum.

The last ‘official’ sequel Disney made to one of its classic line of animated features was The Rescuers Down Under, that was released way back in 1990. Of course, there’s the dozens of mainly straight to DVD sequels that infected stores throughout the 1990s and 2000s, but they were the work of a separate part of Disney.

However, we keep hearing word of Wreck-It Ralph 2 and Frozen 2, both of which are believed to be in development. And once upon a time, there was chat of a follow-up to Walt Disney Animation Studio’s 50th animated feature, 2010’s Tangled.

And now we’ve found out the simple reason why it didn’t happen.

We chatted to Tangled‘s producer, Roy Conli, for the release of his new film, Big Hero 6. And he confirmed that Tangled 2 was something that Disney was actively investigating (and indeed that conversations about sequels are coming up at Disney).

“There was a desire to somehow take it into a filmic sequel,” he admitted of Tangled. So why did it stumble? It comes down to the fact that directors Nathan Greno and Byron Howard ultimately “weren’t really interested” in following up the story. Plus, as Conli pointed out, “her hair was gone!”

So there you have it. Not a complicated story, but rare confirmation that Disney was indeed working on an official sequel to one of its animated hits.

Our full interview with Conli is here, and Big Hero 6 is now in cinemas. Rumors of a sequel to that one have started already…