IT became a monster hit, but the road to celluloid success was paved with many miss-steps along the way for Disney’s animated film Frozen.

The most successful animated film of all time has generated $1.3 billion at the box office worldwide launching an entire industry of costumes, toys and even a short film sequel called Frozen Fever that will play before the new Cinderella film in March.

The famous Hans Christian Andersen Snow Queen fairy tale had been on the list of classics to be given the Disney Animation Studios treatment since the 1930s but writers struggled with how to make the main character, often painted as a villain, relatable to mass audiences.

In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Telegraph, producer Roy Conli revealed how Disney found a way to make the story of the feisty sisters trying to rescue their kingdom from an eternal winter into celluloid gold.

media_camera The story of feisty sisters trying to rescue their kingdom from an eternal winter into celluloid gold.

In 2011, Frozen co-director Chris Buck sketched out a sympathetic relatable teenager called Elsa, who was blessed with powers she had to learn to control.

Conli, who also produced the current hit Big Hero 6 as well as 2010’s Tangled, says there are three elements that make up a successful Disney story and making the audience fall in love with the characters is key.

DISNEY’S READ TO ME STORYBOOKS AND CDS:

START COLLECTING THEM WITH THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH AND THE DAILY TELEGRAPH FROM SUNDATY, FEBRUARY 8

“One is that you create a world people want to be in and we start with that world literally before we start the story, before we do an outline, before we do anything, what is the world we’re telling this in? We need to know this is something people will want to spend time in,” he says.

“Then we start thinking, ‘OK, what happens in this world, how do we make these events something compelling?’

“And then third, and most importantly, who are these characters and how do we build characters people will fall in love with? You can tell almost any story in the world as long as people fall in love with the characters.

media_camera A new generation of Disney: Welcome to Frozen.

“So essentially, you build characters people love, you put them in a compelling situation and then you place it all in this amazing world – that’s how we approach storytelling at Disney.” Underlying these often painful, decades-long processes of drafting and rewriting is the realisation by the various creative souls involved in Disney storytelling that the stories themselves will be around a lot longer than the people telling them. As Conli observes, there aren’t many movies from 1937 that are widely watched and yet Disney’s Snow White is still a perennial favourite.

“And the first film I can remember was a re-release of (the 1940 film) Pinocchio, which was years after it first came out, but it stuck with me and is fundamental to my core,” Conli says. “The legacy Disney gave us is something we feel we need to hand on and the key issue is not to duplicate, or replicate something from the past, the key is to figure out a way to tell the story in a way that is specific to that story.”

Each generation of Disney storytellers brings something new, he points out. But the stories live on, often in many different formats. The Lion King – a much-loved 1994 film – is also one of the world’s most successful stage musicals and opens in Melbourne in early February after successful runs in Sydney and Brisbane.

This year has seen the film release of the Stephen Sondheim musical Into The Woods, starring Anna Hendrick, which mixes several Brothers Grimm fairy tales with the perennial favourite Cinderella due for release locally in March.

media_camera Cate Blanchett is the Stepmother and Lily James is Cinderella in Disney's live-action feature film, out soon.

Australian Cate Blanchett takes the role of the evil stepmother, with Lily James cast in the title role of Cinderella.

Conli was poached by Disney from the theatre more than two decades ago. Like many of us, he also grew up with the Disney read-long recordings – albeit on vinyl, rather than CD.

“But (the CD read-along) is just a continuation of a style of story-telling, which is exciting,” he says.