The Princess Blog

The transformation sequences  from the upcoming Winx Club reboot were released a few months ago with a tease of the show coming "this fall." Now, the full trailer is available along with the official release date. We can expect to see this new iteration of the 2004 Italian Magical Girl series streaming on Netflix on October 2nd. To the best of my knowledge, this is the fourth time the show has been rebooted in the last twenty years, and hopefully it will be better than the previous attempts . The trailer reveals footage that is more reminiscent of the original series with some modern updates to the animation and characters, such as the transition from hand-drawn to CGI  and the soft-spoken Flora's Spanish accent in an obvious attempt to add more diversity to the show. A lot of the footage in the new Winx Club trailer had been leaked previously over the years that the reboot was in development, but the official trailer shows the finalized animation and designs, which lo...

Thirty years ago, it would have been considered a crime to twist the sweet, gentle princess archetype  into a cold-blooded murderer. Times have changed . Today, the type of violent nature required for horror movie leads is not so far off from how modern princesses act . That's why it's not too surprising that the niche fairy tale horror genre has increased in popularity over the past couple of years. In 2024 alone, there have been three gruesome, twisted princess films, two of which were based on the same fairy tale .  Cinderella's Revenge , Cinderella's Curse , and The Little Mermaid  all take a beloved protagonist known for her kind-hearted nature and turn her into a killer. Is there an audience for this growing trend, or is it merely a passing fad? The concept of combining the traditionally family-friendly fairy tale genre with the darker, more adult horror genre is not entirely novel. Original versions of fairy tales had many dark elements before they were Disney...

Disney hasn't always been the sole distributor of fairy tale film adaptations. There was a 30-year gap between 1959's  Sleeping Beauty , which  marked the end of their Golden Age, and 1989's  The Little Mermaid , which heralded the start of  the Disney Renaissance. During this "dark" era, a large portion of the world was experiencing a tense political climate due to the growing emergence of the Cold War. However, cinema was not completely devoid of new fairy tales at this time. The biggest provider of fairy tale retellings during the '60s and '70s was happening overseas in Czechoslovakia, where a large quantity of low-budget live-action musical films based on and inspired by popular fairy tales were being produced. Movies like The Princess with the Golden Star  in 1959, The Terribly Sad Princess  in 1968, and Princess Goldilocks  in 1973 ushered in a market for relatively obscure fairy tales that still remain untouched by Disney. This trend started ...

After Disney has destroyed their legacy  with one of the worst live-action adaptations of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" in history, it seems like a good time to explore other options. Snow White and the Three Stooges  is a 1961 musical that retells the fairy tale with the famous comedian entertainers Larry, Curly, and Mo, better known as the Three Stooges, taking the place of the seven dwarfs. The title might make the movie sound like a tongue-in-cheek comedy, but from the moment it opens with its classic storybook illustrations, it is clearly something special. Far from a comedy, this film treats every picture-perfect fairy tale moment with the utmost sincerity, from the tragic loss of the king to the prince's found family. It stars Olympic figure skater Carol Heiss  as Snow White and incorporates graceful ice choreography into the film's picturesque winter aesthetics. Snow White and the Three Stooges  starts out similarly to the fairy tale, with a beautiful ...

I was on the fence about reviewing the new Snow White  remake for a while, but since this is The Princess Blog, it's only fair . (See what I did there?) This movie has been the source of endless controversy over the past five years or so. Some of it was unfounded, particularly when it involved racist comments toward the lead actress , but some of it is justified. When the movie was first announced, I shared my thoughts about how the story of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" has already been retold countless times by other studios in a way that modernized it with respect toward the original fairy tale and didn't step on Walt Disney's legacy. Creating a blatant copy of the first feature-length animated movie of all time  and taking away the one thing that made it special—the animation—is an insult to the animation medium as an art form. My stance on this has not changed, so here are my thoughts on this sham of a film. Ever since the backlash to Rachel Zegler...

A few days ago, Disney released the full soundtrack  of their controversial Snow White  movie that comes out this week. Among the multitude of new songs that have been added to the butchering of this classic film is one performed by Andrew Burnap called "Princess Problems."  This song has not been promoted nearly as much as the new "feminist" anthem, "Waiting on a Wish," and for good reason. With all the negativity surrounding this movie, anyone who sees the title of this song would have instant fodder to take it out of context and apply it to Disney directly, and they wouldn't be too far off. Disney does  have princess problems, but not the ones described in the song. A couple of weeks ago, Disney announced that they were ceasing production of their upcoming Tiana series , which had been in development hell for the past five years, upsetting many fans and even the voice actress for Tiana herself . The cause of this cancellation was their decision t...

Disney was once famous for producing the most screen-accurate adaptations of well-known fairy tales, but their mission has strayed in recent years . Their current fairy tales are either soulless remakes of their animated classics  or stories that shy so far from the original source material that they can barely be considered adaptations. Nowadays, if you want to see classic stories from the past  brought to life on screen, you must turn to other studios. In a way, this post is the opposite of my "Ten Alternatives to Disney's Live-Action Remakes"  since that was a list of movies that were more creative and original with their ideas, and these are movies that stick as close to the source as possible. If you want to see the stories from your childhood brought to life on screen, this is the post for you. Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (1957) Disney produced a beautiful remake of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella  starring Brandy in 1997, but the first produc...

Disney's live-action remakes have become a problem over the past decade that have cheapened the classic status of their animated princess movies. The recent announcement of adding Tangled to the roster further solidifies their status as a has-been company trying to bank off its former glory. If you prefer live-action movies over animation, there is nothing wrong with that. However, wouldn't you want to watch a live-action movie that does something new and original rather than a lifeless carbon copy of a previously animated story? If so, this is the post for you. Here are ten suggestions for alternative movies that are comparable to the live-action remakes current and upcoming Disney Princess movies that are more original and visually engaging than their copycat counterparts. Alternative to Once Upon a Time: The 10th Kingdom Once Upon a Time started out as an intriguing concept that introduced original fairy tale characters who were trapped in the real world, but it devolved...

At D23 Expo Brazil , a new trailer premiered for Disney's upcoming Snow White remake . Unlike most of their trailers, which release to the public immediately after their first screening, this one remained under wraps for three weeks. Today, Disney has quietly made the new trailer public. Along with new footage that wasn't in the original teaser , the trailer included our first listen to "Waiting on a Wish," a new song to be performed by Rachel Zegler specifically for this adaptation. This song is obviously meant to replace "I'm Wishing" from the original film, which places too much focus on Snow White's desire for romance, something that Disney has been shying away from with their recent movies . You can check out the new trailer below. The trailer opens with a first look at Snow White's father, who was not included in the original movie, following the tradition of live-action remakes to reveal characters that we didn't get to see in the...

There aren't many arthouse movies that incorporate fairy tale or princess themes since Disney holds the monopoly on most of them. When one of my readers recommended  A Fairy Tale After All , a film that was released by Premiere Entertainment Group , I was curious what an original fairy tale-inspired indie flick might look like. This movie stands apart from the 2018 indie adaptation of The Little Mermaid  and its spiritual sequel, Anastasia Once Upon a Time , because it tells an original story using different creative mediums including animation , puppets , and music . The overall quality is on par with other indie attempts at adapting fairy tales, but I appreciate that the filmmakers tried to do something different with commonly used princess tropes. The story has an important message about grief and accepting loss. Sky is an imaginative teenage girl suffering from the loss of her father and struggling to fit in at school. To cope with these struggles, she escapes to a fantas...

Disney fans from all of the world are gathering at the Anaheim Convention Center this weekend to celebrate the D23 Expo , the ultimate Disney fan event. The Expo contains all the biggest announcements about upcoming Disney shows, experiences, and merchandise, and it is an absolute blast to experience in person . Its most anticipated event, the Disney Entertainment Showcase, took place Friday night. A whole slew of trailers, performances, and exclusive footage was revealed for all of the upcoming Disney movies over the next three years. Three of these included Disney Princess franchises – Snow White , Moana 2 , and Frozen 3 and 4 . However, the vast majority of the announcements consisted of sequels, remakes, and spinoffs , meaning there is still no update on the Penelope movie that was announced two years ago. The Snow White trailer was one of the last to be revealed during the Disney Entertainment Showcase due to it being one of the most heavily anticipated ( or dreaded , depen...