The Princess Blog

World Princess Week  is almost over, and Disney decided to go out in a big way. In honor of the 70th anniversary of Disneyland Park , a star-studded princess concert was held in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle, complete with princess character performers  and several of the original Disney Princess voice actresse,s  including Jodi Benson , Paige O'Hara , Anika Noni Rose , and Auli'i Cravalho . The event was hosted by the incredibly talented Susan Egan , of Broadway and Hercules  fame, and Ginnifer Goodwin , Once Upon a Time's Snow White . I've heard many of these sirens of the stage and screen  perform live at several events , and it was nothing short of magical. For last year's World Princess Week, Disneyland hosted a performance from a brand new girl group  introducing the new Disney Princess anthem , "Create Your World." Although the slogan stuck, the anthem itself was never heard again, despite this concert being a perfect opportunity to perform ...

World Princess Week  is back, and that means fun new surprises from Disney! This year's princess treat was more of a throwback to 2023  when Disney launched an adorable LEGO special on Disney+ called The Castle Quest . In honor of World Princess Week, a sequel premiered on their exclusive streaming service called LEGO Disney Princess: Villains Unite , which is within the same vein as its predecessor. However, the new special is only half the length of The Castle Quest , falling at a paltry 23 minutes. This is a surprisingly short runtime considering that it took two years to create the star-studded sequel. Villains Unite  picks up where The Castle Quest  left off, with the LEGO versions of the iconic Disney Princesses working together to protect a sparkly pink castle that they share. When Snow White comedically eavesdrops on Gaston in the marketplace, she overhears a plot in which he assembles four other classic Disney villains—Jafar, Ursula, Kaa, and The Evil ...

It's been three years since the announcement  that Jennifer Lopez was working on a serial adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella . At this point, it seemed like the project was cancelled, given that nothing else was announced since then. Impossible things are happening every day, and  Disney+ has landed the rights to it after a bidding war with Amazon. It looks like the pumpkin is still fresh. When it was first announced, three other Cinderella adaptations  were released within the same year. Enough time has passed that it isn't as derivative now as it was at the time. Still, the serial format is perplexing, not to mention the fact that it has been in production for at least three years and still doesn't have a release window. There have been new developments since the project was first announced, namely that it will be the backstory of the Fairy Godmother, which is reminiscent of another series that got announced years ago. The Deadline article states th...

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...

For the last thirty years or so, Disney on Broadway  has been protective of their live shows, encouraging fans to come to New York City and watch them with their families at high costs. A lot of things changed during the COVID lockdowns . For one, it has become more common for professional recordings of live theater to be made available for people to watch in the comfort of their own homes. In 2020, Disney shared their proshot of Tangled: The Musical , which had previously only been available on their cruise ships. They also tested the waters by releasing a proshot of the record-breaking Hamilton on Disney+. The lockdowns may be over, but their effects have had lasting changes on the media, making it more common than ever to watch live theater from home. The most recent example of this is their West End proshot of Frozen: The Musical , which is available to stream starting today on Disney+. I have my issues with the Frozen movie , but in my opinion, the stage show is the best adap...

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...

If there was ever a musical that felt like it was written just for me, it's  Between the Lines . Never heard of it? That's not surprising. The show had a limited premiere for a few weeks in 2017 and a quiet off-Broadway run for a few months in 2022 before disappearing from the face of the earth. Its fall to obscurity was a crying shame until a pro-shot was released this year on BroadwayHD , the official streaming service for live theater. Based on a novel by Jodi Picoult  and her then-teenage daughter, Samantha van Leer , the musical tells the story of a high school book nerd named Delilah who falls in love with a prince from a fairy tale that comes to life. This story is incredibly meaningful to me as both a writer and a reader. Not only have I had many intense crushes on fictional characters, but the plot is nearly identical to the first script I ever wrote for my first screenwriting class in college. Between the Lines is a love letter for princess fans around the world th...

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...

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...

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...