The princess is dead. And it's going to take a lot more than a kiss to bring her back.

The folks at Disney animation say that after Rapunzel lets down her hair this week in Tangled, they're walking away from her, happily ever after.

Yes, can you believe it? The company is scrapping all plans to make future princess movies -- actually all fairytale movies -- and killing two projects now in the works, The Snow Queen and Jack and the Beanstalk. 

So good news, princess-hating parents. You've only got Snow White, Cinderella, Belle, Aurora, Ariel, Jasmine, Pocahontas, and Mulan ... oh, and Tiana and Rapunzel, to deal with and fend off.

When Pixar king John Lasseter took over the animation department at Disney a few years ago, he surprised a lot of people by saying that Disney would not only keep making traditional animated movies, but would revive the more traditional princess-style tales.

But then came The Princess and the Frog, which despite winning love from some critics, some parents, and a few kids, didn't do so well at the box office. And clearly they aren't too stoked about Tangled this week, though they hope that maybe they've made a movie that will appeal to more than little girls.

It's a big move. As the LA Times points out, the princess castle is embedded in the Disney pictures logo and at the center of all the theme parks.

So who shoved the ladies down the wishing well? Wall-E and Woody of course, also Jack Sparrow and Iron Man, but more than anyone, Miranda Cosgrove and Selena Gomez. 

Professor Dafna Lemish of Southern Illinois University tells the Times:

By the time they're 5 or 6, they're not interested in being princesses ... They're interested in being hot, in being cool. Clearly, they see this is what society values.

I have got to get me one of these professor gigs. Pretty sure I could make that kind of observation. Do you need special schooling?

But what the Times doesn't say is we've been here before -- when most of us were kids. The world was princess-free in the Free to Be You and Me '60s and '70s.

After Sleeping Beauty in 1959, there wasn't a princess movie again for 30 years. Until Ariel rose from the seafoam in 1989.

So they'll be back. I just know it. You just have to wish upon a dream that your heart makes under the sea.

What do you think of princess-free movies?

 

Image via Flickr/DarrenWittko