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Disney restyles 'Rapunzel' to appeal to boys


With 'The Princess and the Frog' coming up short at the box office, the studio retools its next animated feature to lose the girly taint. Now it's called 'Tangled,' with a swashbuckling male lead.

March 09, 2010|By Dawn C. Chmielewski and Claudia Eller
  • A still from the upcoming Disney animated movie "Tangled." The studio changed the title from "Rapunzel" and brought in an Errol Flynn-styled male lead, hoping to draw boys to the film.
A still from the upcoming Disney animated movie "Tangled."… (Disney Enterprises )

Disney is wringing the pink out of its princess movies.

After the less-than-fairy-tale results for its most recent animated release, "The Princess and the Frog," executives at the Burbank studio believe they know why the acclaimed movie came up short at the box office.

Brace yourself: Boys didn't want to see a movie with "princess" in the title.

This time, Disney is taking measures to ensure that doesn't happen again. The studio renamed its next animated film with the girl-centric name "Rapunzel" to the less gender-specific "Tangled."

The makeover of "Rapunzel" is more than cosmetic. Disney can ill afford a moniker that alienates half the potential audience, young boys, who are needed to make an expensive family film a success.

"We did not want to be put in a box," said Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, explaining the reason for the name change. "Some people might assume it's a fairy tale for girls when it's not. We make movies to be appreciated and loved by everybody."

So Disney is taking no chances with "Tangled," positioned to take advantage of holiday family moviegoing when it opens Nov. 24. The studio's marketing campaign will amp up the role of the dashing Errol Flynn-styled male lead to share the spotlight with the golden-haired namesake of the classic Brothers Grimm story. Hints of swashbuckling action are already being leaked online.

"In our film, the infamous bandit Flynn Rider meets his match in the girl with the 70 feet of magical golden hair," wrote the film's producer, Roy Conli, on Disney Animation's Facebook page. "We're having a lot of fun pairing Flynn, who's seen it all, with Rapunzel, who's been locked away in a tower for 18 years."

Flynn Rider, of course, is nowhere to be found in the original "Rapunzel" story.

In the Grimm tale, a prince riding through a forest is enticed by Rapunzel's sweet singing and climbs up the tower where the imprisoned girl is reachable only by her golden tresses. The prince is hardly the boastful swordsman type, let alone a charming rogue. And in Disney's latest version, the demure princess is transformed into a feisty teen.

Disney hopes the introduction of the slightly bad-boy character will help it tap the broadest possible audience for "Tangled," emulating the success of its corporate sibling, Pixar. Pixar's movies have been huge hits because they appeal to girls, boys and adults. Its most recent release, "Up," grossed more than $700 million worldwide.

"The Princess and the Frog" generated considerably less -- $222 million in global ticket sales to date.




Floyd Norman, a retired Disney and Pixar animator, lampooned the new name with a cartoon on his blog that depicts Rapunzel in her tower brandishing a machine gun and declaring "Rapunzel Salvation: This Is Not a Princess Movie."

"The idea of changing the title of a classic like 'Rapunzel' to 'Tangled' is beyond stupid," said Norman, who worked on films including "Mulan" and "Monsters, Inc."


Rapunzel isn't the only Disney princess to have a boy problem.

Concluding it had too many animated girl flicks in its lineup, Disney has shelved its long-gestating project "The Snow Queen," based on the Hans Christian Andersen story. "Snow Queen" would have marked the company's fourth animated film with a female protagonist, following "The Princess and the Frog," "Tangled" and Pixar's forthcoming "The Bear and the Bow," directed by Pixar's first female director, Brenda Chapman, and starring Reese Witherspoon.

Since the release of its first movie, "Toy Story," in 1995, Pixar has uniformly featured male leads in its films, including Buzz and Woody; Mr. Incredible, the middle-aged superhero in "The Incredibles"; and Lightning McQueen, the stock-car star of "Cars."

But princesses have played an integral role in Disney's animation division since the 1937 debut of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" all the way to last year's "Princess and the Frog." Princesses and other female protagonists helped lead the 1980s and '90s revival of the animation unit with "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast" and "Mulan." The difference between those releases and "Princess and the Frog" is that those earlier films weren't marketed as princess movies.

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