'Frozen' characters trek to 'Northern Lights' in new TV shorts, books

A new 'Frozen Northern Lights' series will feature the 'Frozen' characters as Lego creations and as characters in multiple books. The novel 'Disney Frozen Northern Lights: Journey to the Lights' will be released this July.

The expansion of Disney’s “Frozen” franchise continues, with various new TV segments and literary material based on the movie set to be released. 

Through what Disney is calling the “Frozen Northern Lights” series, multiple animated segments featuring the “Frozen” characters as LEGO characters will air on the Disney Channel this autumn. The clips will then all be grouped together in a TV program that will also air on the Disney Channel 

Several of the movie’s actors, including Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, and Jonathan Groff, will appear in the LEGO segments.

Books will come a little sooner – the title “Journey to the Lights” will be released this July and will tell the story of characters such as Elsa, Anna, and Olaf trying to help the Northern Lights shine again. There will be several more titles following that.

Disney announced in 2015 that a movie sequel to “Frozen” is on its way as well. 

“Frozen” is the biggest Disney's hit to be released by Disney – the movie became the biggest-grossing animated movie worldwide. The studio has had a string of hits in the past several years, with this year’s “Zootopia,” and earlier hits “Big Hero 6,” “Wreck-It Ralph,” and “Tangled” all doing very well.

In Hollywood, success usually means a sequel or some other continuation of the story, yet in multiple cases with these hits, Disney has turned to TV to expand on these worlds, showing how the studio uses multiple forms of entertainment to attempt to appeal to viewers. 

With “Tangled,” Disney brought in the Disney Channel as it is doing with “Frozen Northern Lights.” A TV show based on the story of “Tangled” (which was based on the German “Rapunzel” fairy tale popularized by the Brothers Grimm) starring the film’s actors, Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi, is set to debut in 2017. 

And the film “Big Hero 6” is also set to continue as a TV series, with a program based on the movie scheduled to air on Disney XD in 2017.