The Princess Blog

The spring and summer of 2026 are looking to be an exciting time for princess fans after a dearth of content for the last few years. Many familiar stories are returning to the small screen, from fairy tales to fairies to mermaids . This year will see the return of two famous Rainbow sPa properties, a beloved Disney Jr. princess with a magic amulet, and a modern anime retelling of a classic Hans Christian Andersen story. After a slow winter, our favorite princesses are making a comeback in full force over the next few months. Goodbye, Lara  is by far the most unique of the upcoming princess shows this year. Though it shares many of the same properties as other modern anime series , it is based on the timeless story of "The Little Mermaid."  Japan loves this Hans Christian Andersen classic and rivals Western media in terms of adaptations inspired by it, including a more faithful animated movie that predates Disney's. The premise of Goodbye, Lara combines the classic tal...

The latest princess movie on Netflix is inspired by an old Japanese legend, but it isn't a direct retelling \like The Tale of Princess Kaguya . Instead, Cosmic Princess Kaguya  takes place in a futuristic world where most young people are obsessed with a popular virtual reality game, similar to the anime movie  Belle . It also follows the recent trope of modern musicals like  Six  and Between the Lines  of taking back the narrative by attempting to give Kaguya a happier ending than she had in the fairy tale. Many aspects of the movie are fun and interesting, but it tends to jump around between too many different ideas. Cosmic Princess Kaguya  tells the story of Iroha, a teenage girl whose mother all but abandoned her, leaving her to grow up quickly at a young age. When she finds a baby trapped in a utility pole, she struggles with the decision to take it in or bring it to the police. The baby magically grows into a preteen overnight and bonds with Iroha, wh...

The holiday season  is upon us, which means it's almost time to start a new year filled with new princess content. Within the past few weeks, there has been a slew of announcements regarding upcoming princess properties, and very few of these came from Disney. Netflix is currently the best place for original animated content . They have at least two new animated princess movies coming out in 2026. On the gamer front, a trailer was recently released for a tie-in video game of the new Winx Club reboot . The upcoming Super Mario Bros. movie has also been confirmed to introduce a popular princess from the franchise who has yet to make her theatrical debut. Let's dive into a new year of princesses. Last week, Netflix released the first screenshot from Steps , a fractured retelling of "Cinderella" focusing on one of the ugly stepsisters . Although a similar made-for-TV movie came out in 2002 based on the Gregory Maguire novel, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister , this ada...

It seems like everyone was talking about the new Winx Club reboot  prior to its release. Now that it's finally out, no one seems to care anymore. If you're looking for a place to discuss your favorite fairy princesses (and some awesome non-princess fairies), I've got you covered. Winx Club: The Magic Is Back uses a tongue-in-cheek tagline as a promise that this show will deliver more of the original magic of Winx  than the horrendous live-action Fate: The Winx Saga , which was both a commercial and technical failure. Does it deliver on that promise? For the most part, yes. This reboot starts over from the beginning of Bloom's story, with lots of Easter eggs for fans of the original 2004 Italian cartoon, along with new characters and plot points to keep it feeling fresh. Since Winx Club has been around for over 20 years, it's been rebooted a few times to prevent the characters from aging out of their target age group. Yet, none of the reboots thus far have successfu...

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...

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Rose of Versailles anime , MAPPA  launched a brand new movie that was licensed by Netflix  to retell the story using updated music and animation. The Rose of Versailles  sort of works as a film, but it struggles with many of the same issues as the Sailor Moon Cosmos  movies in that it tries to retell a long story for people with short attention spans and ends up skipping over many important details. The movie is presented as a disjointed musical. The first hour contains a stylized music video practically every five minutes to notate the passage of time and the emotional state of the characters. There was only one point where it looked like a character was singing the song, and it came so long after the more artsy videos that it was pretty jarring. The new adaptation of the 1972 anime retells the story about a woman named Oscar who is trained to be a French soldier to defend Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution. It co...

Nowadays, reboots of nostalgic properties have become so commonplace that it's difficult to get excited  anymore. In the case of Winx Club , an animated reboot, albeit CGI, is more of a correction/apology for the horrendous live-action remake  that came out four years ago. Fate: The Winx Saga had none of the magic, visuals, or whimsy that made Winx Club such a beloved franchise. Rainbow SpA  issued a different type of apology last year in the form of a completely original magical girl series . Mermaid Magic brought back the charm and nostalgia of magical girl transformations, fantasy, and innocent romance that Fate was missing. Now, they are redirecting their attention back to their original fans by focusing on their newest iteration of Winx Club, which is allegedly coming to Netflix this fall. Although Rainbow launched a short teaser  for the 2025 Winx Club reboot late last year, there was very little revealed about what the girls would look like in their fairy for...

Although it was overshadowed by some more "popular" moviegoing experiences this weekend, Spellbound  is one of this year's most anticipated releases amongst old-school  Disney Princess fans. Promising to bring back the feel of classic animated films, the movie was released by the relatively new Skydance Animation Studio  and distributed by Netflix . The Disney tie-in comes from its creative team, using the renowned Alan Menken and Glenn Slater for its music and lyrics and featuring many well-known actors for its voice talent, including Rachel Zegler , Disney's upcoming Snow White , in the lead role of Princess Ellian. The movie takes place in a Latin American-inspired medieval kingdom reminiscent of  Elena of Avalor . Does it live up to the hype? Let's explore. The premise of the movie, which is shoved in our face from the expository opening song, is that Princess Ellian's parents, the king and queen of Lumbria, have mysteriously turned into monsters, forc...

It's been ten years since LoliRock  first took the stage on Netflix, and rumors of a potential third season  inspired me to watch the show again as I did with Winx Club , which recently previewed its upcoming reboot in Italy . LoliRock is a French  Magical Girl show about a lost princess  who must master her new powers while trying to liberate a mysterious faraway kingdom. It hits all the right plot notes to fit the Magical Girl algorithm, but poor writing prevents it from being a memorable entry in the genre. One thing that makes LoliRock unique is its focus on music. The three main characters aren't only magical princesses from other worlds but members of a hit rock band that performs full-length music videos at the end of each episode. Unfortunately, the overly synthesized sound of these songs is not very appealing to me, and I ended up skipping over them during my rewatch. The main character in LoliRock is Iris, a beautiful girl who loves to sing that was r...

Spellbound is quickly becoming the most anticipated princess movie of the winter season. With its all-star cast, convenient streaming format, and apolitical plot structure, this movie is a lovely throwback to animated musicals of the past. Its nostalgic score is composed by Alan Menken , the musical pioneer of the Disney Renaissance. Until today, there were only a few clips of the movie available online along with a brief summary. As of this morning, is a complete trailer available to give us a better idea of what to expect when the movie launches on Netflix on November 22nd. Unfortunately, the trailer does not contain any clips of the anticipated musical numbers, but it does give a solid preview of the animation, plot, and characters that we can expect to see in Spellbound . Make your own judgements by watching it below. The first thing I noticed about the trailer is that this movie is extremely aware of how much star power it has, possibly to its own detriment. Instead of trying t...

The mermaids have arrived! It's been a slow and painful wait, but the first trailer has finally dropped for the highly anticipated Mermaid Magic animated series . Rainbow SpA 's foray into the underwater world is set to premiere on Netflix August 22nd. The show gives off strong H2O: Just Add Water vibes with the three heroines transforming into humans on dry land and mermaids in the water.  H2O's attempt at its own animated series  left much to be desired, allowing this show to kick it up a notch for mermaid fans everywhere to enjoy more exciting animated mermaid adventures. The teaser was launched alongside additional previews of another upcoming mermaid show,  Disney Junior's Ariel , an original take on the classic character. Ariel has a series of ten recently released shorts called Mermaid Tales that give us a taste of what's to come. If you're more of a bookish type  (and who can blame you?), there's also a great new mermaid story out on Wattpad! The...

With the status of Disney's Penelope still up in the air, Skydance Media swooped in to the rescue yesterday with the announcement of a new animated princess musical coming out this year! Spellbound will be a direct-to-streaming Netflix original featuring a new princess named Ellian who goes on a quest to save her family after they get turned into monsters. Though Netflix originals tend to be hit or miss , this movie has some big names behind it that gives it the potential to surpass its theatrical competitors that are coming out the same weekend. This is the first original animated princess movie we've gotten since Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken came out a year ago, so it's pretty exciting news, especially considering that Disney's big holiday princess fare this year is a sequel and not an original story. Get ready to learn about creative team behind Spellbound ! The movie is begin directed by Vicky Jenson who worked on Shrek . The talent behind Princess Ellian is ...

As soon as I saw the previews for Netflix's new animated series, Unicorn Academy , I couldn't get over how similar it looked to Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders . Teenagers forming magical bonds with unicorns to save the world from evil? Yes, please! With a Jewel Riders graphic novel on the horizon, this is the perfect time to revisit that premise. Unicorn Academy is loosely based on a book series of the same name  that got picked up by Netflix and recently aired its first season. The premiere movie and successive eight episodes follow six unicorns and their riders on their quest to protect the magical realm from the evil Ravenzella, who performed reprehensible acts to previous generations, including the father of the main character, Sophia. The show contains a lot of teen angst and drama as well as rainbows, sparkles, and magic. Although Unicorn Academy features an entire school full of unicorn riders training to be protectors, it only focuses on the six students liv...

When I think of Japanese fantasy media, the first thing that comes to mind is anime . That's why I was surprised to see a live-action Japanese movie centered around fairy tales.  Once Upon a Crime  is a recent Netflix release in which Little Red Riding Hood is a detective who attends the infamous royal ball with Cinderella to solve a murder. The movie uses a similar concept to Once Upon a Time  by combining fairy tales and changing the circumstances around certain characters to add an element of surprise. With its lack of wide shots and cheesy visual effects, it was by no means a cinematic masterpiece. However, it did something different with these characters that I have never seen in any other iteration, which is really saying something considering how many versions of "Cinderella" are out there. The movie presents itself as pure camp from the very beginning when a witch named Barbara asks Little Red Riding Hood if she's impressed by the fact that she's a wit...