To the surprise of absolutely no one, Walt Disney announced just over a week ago that Frozen would indeed be getting a stage-based spin-off and various other expansions of the brand. If you've seen the film, you know a stage musical was 100% guaranteed. With $336 million domestic and $763m worldwide as of today, and two Oscar nominations that it will probably win (Best Song and Best Animated Feature), Frozen indeed ranks among the bigger successes in Disney's animated feature film history. But while we're sure to get more merchandise and the explicit immersion of Anna and Elsa into the Disney Princess brand and the theme parks over the next few years, the one thing that wasn't explicitly announced or even hinted at was a theatrical sequel.

Under normal circumstances, a film like Frozen would normally be all-but-guaranteed to get a sequel. It was incredibly well-reviewed, had a terrifically leggy box office run, and features a story that is completely open-ended for further expansion. But Frozen isn't just any normal film. It's a Disney animated film. Over the last 76 years, only five of Disney's theatrical animated features have merited genuine sequels that played in theaters. And two of those were disconnected spin-offs Fantasia and the periodic Winnie the Pooh films. As for explicit direct sequels, there have been only three.

The Rescuers Down Under in 1990 was a minor hiccup in between The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, earning just $47 million domestic. but operating as a test case for the new Computer Animation Production System. It's arguably better than 1977's The Rescuers, but it remains mostly a trivia question. Peter Pan 2: Return To Neverland was initially planned for DVD, but was released in theaters in 2002 and earned a solid $109 million worldwide gross on a $20m budget. Finally in 2003 we had The Jungle Book 2, another theoretical straight-to-DVD sequel that went theatrical. It earned a solid $135m worldwide off a $20m budget.

I'm not talking about the copious direct-to-video/DVD films like The Lion King 1 1/2, stand-alone concepts like Fantasia 2000 nor periodic theatrical features with Winnie the Pooh characters. I'm speaking of specific and explicit franchise continuations that played theatrically in America. Under that criteria, which a theoretical Frozen 2 would fall into, Disney Animation has only made three genuine sequels over 76 years. If you want to include Fantasia 2000 ($90m worldwide and the first feature film to play in IMAX) or the four would-be "sequels" to 1977's The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, I won't begrudge you.

But even so, Walt Disney Animation has stood outside of the conventional pattern of turning its hit films into theatrical sequel machines. DreamWorks Animation has franchised several of its features, specifically the Shrek films, the Kung Fu Panda series, and the ongoing Madagascar films. It's poised to strike huge this summer with How To Train Your Dragon 2. And Universal's Illumination just announced the 2017 release date for Despicable Me 3 while Sony has Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2 and the eventual Hotel Transylvania 2. Fox of course has the insanely profitable Ice Age series and the upcoming Rio 2. Even Pixar has gotten into the game. They took some heat for going the sequel route, more so for Monsters University and Cars 2 than for Toy Story 3, but they still have Finding Dory on tap for 2015. Disney Animation has thus far concentrated on original films.

There is no word about, for example, potential production for Tangled 2 (despite Tangled grossing $591 million worldwide) or Wreck It Ralph Returns (Wreck It Ralph grossed $471m). Either out of a desire to not repeat the same general territory or under the concept that Disney animated features are often treated like quasi-sequels to the last one anyway, Disney Animation has thus-far generally preferred to keep their direct sequels in the DTV market. Granted the mid-90's and 2000's were a boom time for the home video market (Aladdin and the King Of Thieves grossed $185m on VHS alone), so it may just be that Disney was indeed choosing the path of least resistance. But they've rarely had as big of a hit as they scored with Frozen.

As of this writing, Frozen has earned $336 million in domestic grosses. Among the films that have earned that much or higher, only four (The Passion of the Christ with $373m, The Lion King with $422m, E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial with $435m, and Titanic with $658m) went without a sequel and/or don't currently have one in development. If you care, the next biggest grossers without a sequel are Forest Gump ($331m), Up ($293m), The Sixth Sense ($