'Tangled' producer opens up on scrapped sequel plans before live-action reboot: 'Directors weren't really...'
'Tangled' continues to dominate the hearts of fans, even after more than a decade since its release. The fantasy-comedy featuring a lost princess and a wanted thief set the box office on fire in 2010, grossing around $592.5 million throughout its entire run. The immense success made many fans think a sequel could be on the horizon. The movie's producer, Roy Conli, confirms that there were indeed talks of a sequel, according to Den of Geek. The original creatives behind the movie also gathered to figure out ideas for the sequel. Ultimately, though, nothing materialized because of a simple reason.
Conli revealed that the directors (Nathan Greno and Byron Howard) made the decision not to proceed with the Disney sequel. "Well, Tangled, there was a desire to somehow take it into a filmic sequel. But the directors weren’t really interested in doing that. Her hair was gone! There you go!" Conli shared. Greno, in a recent interview with Direct, also shared the same view regarding the unrealized sequel. "No... 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? 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,'" he said.
The directors and the main voice cast returned for an animated short film sequel focusing on Rapunzel and Flynn's wedding. As per Greno, they put the short film together because there was a demand for it, and story-wise, it made sense. "There was a short that we did the wedding [in], 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 (for the sequel)," Greno shared. The narrative limitations did not hinder Disney, though, as it came up with a TV sequel series and movie. Neither 'Tangled: Before Ever After' nor 'Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure' involved Greno or Howard in any capacity. The directors closed the door on revisiting the story, and it remained that way.
The 'Tangled' universe is making a comeback on the big screen with a live-action treatment. Teagan Croft, Milo Manheim, and Kathryn Hahn have already been cast as Rapunzel, Flynn, and Mother Gothel, respectively. Filming is supposed to go underway from June 2026. Greno again has no involvement with the movie and has no idea about what the new team wants to do with the adaptation. "I'm not sure about 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," he shared. No release date has been announced for the movie yet.
