Last Princess Movie ‘Tangled’ Out

Tangled, Disney’s latest release and apparently last princess movie for the next few years, recorded dramatic sales of $11.8 million on Wednesday, but apparently not enough to overthrow the current top-performer. The second-to-the-last in the Harry Potter series held its vise grip of the box office with $14.5 million on the same day.

Tangled is a boy-friendly version of the fairy tale Rapunzel, a result of recent findings that many boys have refused to watch the 2009 film “The Princess and the Frog.” The filmmakers made it a point to include more action-packed scenes in this last princess film before staying out of the princess business for at least the next few years.

“Films and genres do run a course,” says Ed Catmull, chief of Pixar Animation Studios. He oversees Disney Animation along with director John Lasseter. He continues to explain that dying genres may still come back at a later time when “someone has a fresh take on it,” but admits they currently do not have any more musicals or fairy tales on the production line.

The final output is a movie with a gender-neutral title, and an overall mood that many consider a “hair-raising adventure” rather than a princess romance.

Other than the traditional children’s tale components of a difficult pregnancy resulting in an enchanted head of golden locks, Disney apparently tweaked the storyline to incorporate modern language in order to appeal to the tweens age group. Also, the spotlight in its promotions was turned from Rapunzel, with Mandy Moore’s voice, to the movie’s hardcore male character, Flynn Rider.