Sofia the First: Royal Magic is bringing back some fan-favorite characters from the original series next year. Creator and executive producer Craig Gerber and his team dropped the tease at the end of a Disney Television Animation panel at LightBox Expo in Pasadena, as Laughing Place reported. They did not say which characters are coming back.
Asked what it was like to return to Sofia’s world, the team said it felt like meeting familiar characters again after years of writing them, with Ariel Winter’s voice as Sofia still in their heads. Some older characters have already turned up in the new show, and the team teased more updates rooted in the original.
A New School For Sofia
Royal Magic premiered May 25 on Disney Jr., with the first eight episodes streaming on Disney+ the next day. It moves Sofia from Royal Prep to The Charmswell School for Royal Magic, a school for royals who use magic, where she learns to master her powers. Winter is back as Sofia, with Nate Torrence as Pepper, Mela Pietropaolo as Layla, Kai Harris as Zane and Aaliyah Magcasi as Camila.
If the new show looks different from the original, there’s a reason. The biggest one, the team said, is software that now allows feature-quality lighting and rendering. They also wanted it to feel like a fresh show young viewers can jump into without catching up, while keeping the rich, saturated look of a storybook. Gerber added that the flatter look of the first series was partly a way around the limits of CG at the time.
Inside The Pilot’s Throne Race
Most of the panel followed one sequence from the pilot, “Welcome to Charmswell,” from script to finished scene. In the episode, students are sorted into the school’s three castles and race across campus to collect the pieces of their castle banner. The last piece sits in the ballroom, past a floor of spinning enchanted thrones, and Sofia has to help Zane, a new friend who doesn’t feel he belongs at Charmswell, find his way through.
That moment was first written as its own ballad. When the team watched it, they felt the energy had to stay up in the middle of a race, so it became a reprise of “Time to Shine,” the song that opens the series. The thrones aren’t random, either. Supervising director Kris Wimberly drew a map of all 12, moving in teams of three on a set pattern the kids have to figure out.
The pilot runs 22 minutes as a double episode, while most episodes are 11 minutes. Each episode takes about 18 months to get through production, and Wimberly said the Charmswell campus is the biggest environment the show’s animation partner, Icon, has ever built.
Sofia the First: Royal Magic airs on Disney Jr. and streams on Disney+.
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