Rolling out across Disney Jr. and Disney+, Sofia the First: Royal Magic brings the beloved character back eight years after the original series ended. ScreenMDM Talks welcomed Craig Gerber, EP and creator, onto the podcast to reflect on why now was a good time to bring the young princess back, the themes underpinning the storytelling, and how the show, premiering May 25, will resonate with a new generation of preschoolers.
A newer addition to the Disney “Princess Universe,” Sofia the First (who wasn’t born into royalty but inherited her status after her mother married a king) arrived as a pilot in late 2012 before launching as a full series in 2013. The award-winning show ran for four seasons and spawned a slew of consumer products, theme park attractions, and more across the Disney franchise flywheel. The fandom, as it turns out, still exists, years after the series ended.
“The kids who grew up with Sofia, who couldn’t blog or post about it back in the day, started posting about it now that they were tweens and teens,” says Gerber, who has an overall deal at Disney Branded Television, of how talks about bringing Sofia back began. “It became very clear to the company that there was a lot of love for this property out there. You wonder whether things could be a hit, but will they stand the test of time? Those shows that proved to stand the test of time eventually do come back; they proved there was something so much fun and entertaining that it’s worth bringing to a new audience. In the case of Sofia, you would see the theme song going viral on TikTok, there’d be covers, and a lot of reposting of clips from the show. At the time, there was initially an idea that there might be a spinoff of the show with new characters, but during the course of development, we saw that the best way to bring the show back was to bring Sofia back and follow her further adventures.”
Watch the podcast on YouTube below or on Spotify here.
Sofia’s adventures this time are set at the Charmswell School for Royal Magic, where she must learn to harness her powers. “To put her in a new show, one of the challenges for me was to come up with a new journey that was worth everybody’s time following,” Gerber says. “One of the things we landed on was that Sofia has this magical amulet and magical powers. She was actually pulled inside her magical amulet in the series finale of the original show. We thought this would be a great new direction for the character. We’ve been focusing on her being royal, and she will still learn lessons about being royal or impart lessons about being royal. One of the conceits of the original show was that she was a girl from the village who became a royal and had to learn how to be royal, but she was actually more royal inside than most of the people around her!”
The broader Princess Universe also factors into the new series, with Rapunzel appearing in episode one and others set for cameos throughout the season. “You want to bring the tone, charm, and the fun of the original show,” Gerber said. “You want to bring over the characters, and you want them to be consistent, but you also want to play around with the stories that you’re telling. You want a fresh take on the way you’ve done things in the past. In the first show, each princess only showed up once. Until the very end in the last episode, their faces were there for a second at a critical moment, but really, they only arrived once. We’re doing it differently. Rapunzel shows up in the first episode. She’s going to come back. We’re going to see other princesses. Sofia’s going to meet Moana. She’s going to meet a few of the princesses at the same time. We’re doing things that we haven’t done before that I think audiences will be extremely excited about, because they’ll never know what to expect. In the first show, it was a bit of a formula. Sofia got in a jam, a princess came, gave her advice, and then split. Now, a princess might come and stick around for a little while.”
I also spoke with Gerber about the core themes and lessons he wants to impart in the new series. “I love creating stories in the Disney Princess Universe,” says Gerber, who also created the hit series Elena of Avalor. “There’s a lot of fantasy wish fulfillment and magic, and comedy. But because the audience is comprised of young children, it’s important to give them themes that they can use in their lives as they grow emotionally and socially. To that end, some of the key themes in this show are resilience, empathy, and bravery. The world moves very fast. There’s a lot more information flowing around. You’re getting inundated with things you need to know and do. It’s not just school. It’s school and screens. And not just screens, but many screens, sometimes at the same time. Life can feel very overwhelming. So, letting children know that it’s okay if you don’t get it right the first time, just pick yourself up and try again, and eventually you’ll get there, is a very meaningful theme, and we’ll hit that in different ways multiple times. Thinking about how other people are feeling and what they’re going through that you might not know about is also important. The more empathy people have, the kinder they are to other people because they’re not just looking at it through their own prism. Leading with kindness is another important theme.”
While social engagement from nostalgic fans helped resurrect Sofia the First, Gerber stresses that the series is firmly in the preschool space, intended for a new generation of young viewers. “We’re doing a new show for a new audience. It’s very young. It’s a sequel in the sense that it happens next. It’s not a sequel in the sense that it’s continuing the storylines of the original show. Fans of the original show who want to see where we left her won’t find a lot of that. Personally, I’m a little bummed about that. But the primary audience that we’re trying to reach is the new generation of Sofia fans. We want them to be able to jump right in and not have to know what happened before. If they need to know something about what happened before, it just has to be in a few sentences. We are bringing back things from the original show, but it really is a new experience. Same Sofia, new adventures.”
Like the original, though, music plays a huge role. “We have mostly 11-minute episodes. We’re being very ambitious in doing an original song in each 11-minute episode. We have a 30-episode order for season one. We have at least 60 songs in this season!”
My chat with Gerber wrapped up with a discussion of where the kids’ business finds itself amid changes in viewing behavior and a pullback from many streamers. “You could look at it and say everything’s becoming short-form and YouTube content. But ultimately, one of the things Disney has been very successful at is creating characters and stories that audiences fall in love with. Frozen and Moana were 90-minute movies that kids somehow sat through and loved. If you provide something fresh and engaging, I think the audience will respond. The trick now is to get the audience’s eyeballs on it. A lot of people got scared out of the business. You have streamers who are just not making kids’ animation anymore, and that’s unfortunate. They’re just a couple of hits away from them realizing there is a huge market there and coming back to it. I’m very hopeful that because these things could be cyclical, it comes back around.”
Ultimately, Gerber says, kids deserve “well thought out, well produced, well animated entertainment, just like adults do.”
