Production notes

Producer Peter Del Vecho said on March 31, 2014, that he, Chris Buck, and Jennifer Lee collaborated well, and he envisioned another Frozen-related project. The following month, Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan F. Horn said that a sequel would not be immediately forthcoming because the studio was focusing on a Broadway musical adaptation of Frozen. In a May 2014 CNBC interview with David Faber, the Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger said that the company would not force the development of a sequel, because it was concerned about not living up to the first film. Iger said that the Frozen franchise "is something that is kind of forever for the company", similar to The Lion King. On June 10, 2014, Lee confirmed that Walt Disney Studios CCO John Lasseter had authorized her and Buck to explore a possible sequel. While working on the short film Frozen Fever (2015), they realized that they missed the characters. Meanwhile, Del Vecho had been asked by fans about Frozen's future. Lee, Buck, and Del Vecho discussed the possibility of a sequel. Buck later said, "The one thing that we did right away was to figure out what would be satisfying for Anna and Elsa at the end of the movie." They decided on ending the sequel with Anna becoming the queen of Arendelle, while Elsa would be "free".

Iger, Lasseter, and actor Josh Gad announced at Disney's March 12, 2015, annual shareholders' meeting in San Francisco that Frozen 2, a full-length sequel, was in development; Buck and Lee would return as directors, and Del Vecho as producer. The production team traveled to Norway, Finland, and Iceland for background research; they decided to make Elsa a "mythic hero" with magic ice powers and Anna a "fairytale hero" who lives in a magical world but has no magic powers. They concluded that the first film successfully combined the two elements. Allison Schroeder was hired to assist Lee with the script in August 2018 after Lee succeeded Lasseter as Disney Animation's CCO; Lee was credited as the film's screenwriter, and Schroeder was credited with additional screenplay material. The film's story contributions were made by Lee, Buck, Marc Smith, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, and Robert Lopez. Overall, the budget was approximately $150 million. Voice recording began in September 2017, although Menzel started a couple of weeks later due to a concert tour. That month, Gad announced his role in the sequel with Buck, Lee, Del Vecho, and Lasseter. In July 2018, Variety reported that Wood and Brown were in talks to join the cast. Their roles were later disclosed as Iduna and Lieutenant Destin Mattias. Wood was cast because her voice resembled Menzel and Bell's. The voice of Agnarr was changed from Maurice LaMarche to Molina. The Voice's four-note call, derived from the Latin sequence "Dies irae", is delivered in a manner resembling the Scandinavian music form kulning. Frozen 2's first completed scenes were test screened at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in June 2019, where Becky Bresee and effects-animation head Marlon West said that the film was "still in production, with seven weeks of animation to be completed and 10 weeks of special effects". The filmmakers collaborated with Sámi experts on the depiction of the Northuldra tribe with Verdett, an advisory group which was the result of an agreement between the Walt Disney Company, the transnational Saami Council, and the Sámi parliaments of Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Anderson-Lopez confirmed that Elsa would have no female love interest in the film, despite some fans' desire for one. Lee later explained to The New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd that Elsa's main audience did not seem ready for such a relationship. Lee also stated in a press conference that Frozen 2 would not acquire elements from the television series Once Upon a Time's Frozen storyline, which was part of its fourth season. Frozen 2 underwent significant revisions after its first test screening in San Diego; Disney Animation discovered that although adults liked the film, children found it hard to follow. The production team realized they needed to clarify the identity of the Voice and the point of Elsa's transformation, and add more comedy and shots of Bruni (the fire salamander). A scene of expository dialogue in which the lead characters explained to the people trapped in the Enchanted Forest why they had come there was replaced with Olaf's humorous recap of Frozen. Due to the changes, the animators needed to create 61 new shots and redo another 35. An undisclosed number of shots were cut from the finished film; about a dozen animators and artists worked for two months on an elaborate resurrection scene for Olaf before it was cut. The last major animation scene completed before the production team locked the picture was "Show Yourself", the musical number in which Elsa enters Ahtohallan and learns all the secrets she has been seeking. According to Del Vecho, the scene "required all of the resources at the studio" to get the film done on time. Lopez said that the first draft of "Show Yourself" was very different from its final version. Megan Harding directed an official documentary series on the production of Frozen 2, which depicted the process of Del Vecho and Lopez determining The Voice's identity. Once the production team settled on Queen Iduna, the lyrics of "Show Yourself" finally began to come together, but then the studio's artists, designers, and animators needed to quickly figure out how to stage the dramatic culmination of Elsa's journey towards becoming the Snow Queen. The film was edited by Jeff Draheim.

Costume and character designs underwent several revisions before they were finalized. According to designer Griselda Sastrawinata-Lemay, the process was the most intricate of any animated film. Technological advancements allowed the designer to create more-detailed outfits, with extra beads and sequins. The team used Marvelous Designer, a computer-generated imagery (CGI) program, to drape each character's clothing. Anna's outfit was inspired by the Norwegian folk bunad, worn during the 1840s and 1850s. Typically made of wool, it had decorative embroidery. Anna lost the pigtail braid she had in Frozen because she is three years older in Frozen 2, and it was replaced by a braid across the back of her head. Aging Elsa three years was inspired by artists Alexander McQueen and Elie Saab. Saab's designs had long trains and cumbersome floor-length hemlines; the designers instead created a tailored coat with a double-panel cape and epaulettes, highlighting Elsa's strength. The animation team used a curve-based method for the intricate embroidery. A program interpreted two-dimensional visual designs as line strokes, rendering them as curves. This allowed quick changes, minimizing manual work during design modifications. It also supported free-form stitching with threads of various widths, colors, and densities, crucial to the production of a variety of embroidery styles.

About 800 people, 80 of them animators, were involved in the production of Frozen 2. Tony Smeed and Becky Bresee were the film's heads of animation; Hyun-Min Lee replaced Bresee as supervising animator for Anna, while Wayne Unten again served as supervising animator for Elsa as he had done on Frozen. Steve Goldberg was the supervising animator for visual effects. Scott Beattie was the director of cinematography layout, while Mohit Kallianpur was the director of cinematography lighting. Frozen 2 made use of advancements in technology, artistic performance, and skeletal animation. Before the animation began, Unten showed scenes of superheroes like Frozone to Elsa's animators as examples of what to avoid. Creating the personal flurry effect was so difficult for the animators that the directors had Elsa put a permafrost coating on Olaf in Frozen 2 instead. Elsa's graceful movements were modeled on Frozen and modern dance, particularly Martha Graham's work. In accordance with Disney's preference for a different style for each film and the directors' and production designer's artistic vision, the multi-departmental animation team was instructed to reconstruct the characters so they were slightly different in tone and style from Frozen. They differed in "very subtle ways", with a "through line from the first movie to the second". As well as making the Enchanted Forest vegetation autumnal, the effects team applied two internally developed applications (Vegetation Asset and Fire Tree) to enhance the film's vegetation and fire animation. Lighting and special effects were applied to glacial ice, spirit magic, and memory. The first step for the animation team was to study the screenplay and understand the characters. Blocking (creating key poses) was next, followed by CGI and layout. Effects were proposed for layout before animation process to choreograph the dam-collapse scene. Although Frozen's greatest difficulty for Frozen was the winter snow, Frozen 2 is set in fall; its main challenge was how to consistently depict the wind and "pass that downstream". Frozen 2's animation software was influenced by the software in several other Disney films. Anna's hair was animated with Quicksilver, developed for Moana (2016) to deal with wind; for Elsa's hair, the lighting software Beast was used. A vocal coach instructed the animators on how a singer would breathe. The animators then spent about eight months creating Nøkk, which has a liquid appearance, with effects supervised by Erin Ramos. Jötunns had a long rigging process to avoid making rocks distracting. The water simulation was intended to be more realistic than in Moana. To create Gale, the wind spirit, a tool called Swoop was developed. They later received real-time feedback from the supervisors, directors, and producer.

Lopez and Anderson-Lopez returned from Frozen to write songs for the sequel, and Christophe Beck returned as composer. The soundtrack album was released on November 15, 2019, after the release of Panic! at the Disco's version of one of the film's songs, "Into the Unknown". The seven-song album also contains a remix of "Reindeer(s) Are Better Than People" from Frozen. Beck said that the score conveys Elsa and Anna's emotional growth, "matured and introduc[ing] more sophisticated musical concepts and thematic elements". He wanted it to reflect the film's complex, intense imagery. Anderson-Lopez described the album's theme as a "meta-story". Although Harding sent a camera crew to the Lopez home in Brooklyn to document their songwriting and composing, the composers found the crew intrusive and did most of their work off-camera.

Frozen 2 grossed $477.4 million in the United States and Canada and $976.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $1.453 billion. It was the third-highest-grossing film of 2019, the tenth-highest-grossing film of all time, and the second-highest-grossing animated film of all time. On December 15, 2019, Frozen 2 passed the $1 billion mark at the global box office. Deadline Hollywood calculated the film's net profit as $599 million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participations, and other costs; box office grosses and home media revenues placed it second on their list of 2019's "Most Valuable Blockbusters". According to Disney (who did not consіder the 2019 Lion King remake an anіmated fіlm but a live-action reboot), Frozen 2 was the hіghest-grossing anіmated fіlm (surpassing Frozen) at that time. Frozen 2's box-office success was attributed to its release date near Thanksgiving. According to Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian, the film was "perfectly positioned to play well into 2020." Frozen 2 was released with A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and 21 Bridges on November 22, 2019, in 4,440 theaters: 2,500 in 3D, 800 in the premium large format (including 400 in IMAX), and 235 in D-Box/4DX. It grossed $41.8 million on its first day, including $8.5 million from Thursday night previews. The film debuted grossing $130 million, the highest opening for an animated film that month. Frozen 2 primarily drew a mostly female audience and approximately 70 percent of the viewers were families. Its second weekend grosses dropped by 34 percent to $85.6 million (with $125 million over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend) and followed by another $34.7 million the third weekend. By December 29, the film's domestic grosses topped $400 million. Frozen 2 left theaters by March 19, 2020, making it the fourth highest-grossing film of 2019 in the United States and Canada, at which point the film industry became significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Worldwide, Frozen 2 grossed $228.2 million in its opening weekend in 37 markets, for a global debut total of $358.5 million. This surpassed the 2019 remake of The Lion King to become the highest-grossing film for an animated title until The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) took over. It had the best all-time opening of an animated film in the United Kingdom ($17.8 million) and France ($13.4 million); the biggest start for a Pixar or Disney Animation title in China ($53 million), Japan ($18.2 million), Germany ($14.9 million) and Spain ($5.8 million), and the third-biggest opening of any film in South Korea ($31.5 million). The film grossed $11.4 million in its second week in the United Kingdom, bringing its total gross there to $35.3 million. By January 5, 2020, the film's offshore gross had exceeded $875.3 million. As of July 2021, its top international markets were Japan ($122.6 million), China ($122.3 million), South Korea ($95.5 million), the United Kingdom ($69.7 million), Germany ($60.6 million), and France ($53.9 million).

Frozen 2 received generally positive reviews. It has an approval rating of 77% based on 336 professional reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Frozen II can't quite recapture the showstopping feel of its predecessor, but it remains a dazzling adventure into the unknown." Metacritic (which uses a weighted average) assigned Frozen 2 a score of 64 out of 100 score based on 47 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of A− (lower than Frozen's A+) on an A+ to F scale, and PostTrak rated it 4.5 out of five stars on the film's opening day.

Critics praised Frozen 2's craftsmanship, delivery, and themes. The New York Times critic Manohla Dargis called the narrative a "pink world of adventure and aspirational uplift", and Nell Minow of RogerEbert.com noted its frank, compelling depiction of issues which were understandable by audiences of all ages. Dargis cited Frozen 2's engaging visual imagery, balanced by romance and history, and Minow noted the film's autumnal palette. Peter Travers (Rolling Stone), Simran Hans (The Guardian), and Todd McCarthy (The Hollywood Reporter) praised the film. Travers, who enjoyed reconnecting with the characters, called the animation stunning and referred to the music as "tantalizing earworms". Hans compared the film's narrative to real-world efforts to mitigate climate change. McCarthy praised its "catchy songs", "easy-to-like characters", and "astonishing backdrops", with humor and a plot driven by "female empowerment galore". Frozen 2's narrative, music, and focus were criticized. In The Wall Street Journal, John Anderson noted that the sequel was not innovative and criticized the film's flawed narrative and low-quality music in comparison with Frozen. In an Empire review, Ben Travis said that the narrative relied too much on mythology and hazy backstories. Minow criticized the film's excessively detailed narrative, and Observer writer Oliver Jones said that the film's energy and originality were overly focused on the sisters. Reviewers for the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post cited Frozen 2's complicated story and dark tone.

At the 92nd Academy Awards, Frozen 2 received a nomination for Best Original Song. The film's other nominations include eight Annie Awards (winning two), a British Academy Film Award, two Critics' Choice Movie Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards.