It`s really remarkable how they changed and retooled the movie in such a short period of time and changed the gender of the lead (especially since Frozen II is coming up next year). Cause it would`ve been interesting if Disney actually made a human-centered picture with a male lead nowadays. Perhaps it could be a reason for why there haven`t been any information released about it before now. But like you said, the whole concept resembles a Disney Channel movie (in a time where the Disney Channel properties aren`t as huge as they used to be), let alone a Pixar flick. As such a premise seems like something that Pixar would`ve come up with. And yes, it`s pretty remarkable how they had Fawn Veerasunthorn be in charge of it after Wish.Sotiris wrote: โFri Apr 17, 2026 1:03 am Wow, this was heavily retooled in such a short amount of time. They changed the sex of the lead and aged them up. They changed the look of the mom too who was originally going to be blonde. The tone of the film seems to have changed as well. It looks more comedic than before. The whole thing resembles a Disney Channel movie more now.
I wonder why they decided to change this from a mother-son movie to a mother-daughter one. I feel that mother-daughter stories are much more common in media whereas we don't see mother-son ones as often. Perhaps they got nervous having a male lead since their last male-led film, Strange World, flopped hard. I also got the impression that the male lead wouldn't have been your typical masculine little boy, so perhaps they gender-swapped him to avoid controversy, similar to their concerns surrounding Pixar's Elio. It's also possible they got influenced by the success of K-Pop: Demon Hunters and decided to turn this into a magical girl-power movie in the hopes it would find similar success.
It's also noteworthy that Josie Trinidad got demoted to a co-director. We haven't had a director of a WDAS film get demoted to co-director since Raya and the Last Dragon. What I don't understand is why they would entrust Fawn Veerasunthorn of all people with the direction of another WDAS movie after the massive failure of Wish.
I agree about the character designs. The mom looks too cartoony and exaggerated. The expression on the daughter is too reminiscent of Elsa's famous clipart. But the most off-putting thing for me is their body proportions. They look like stick figures. This is how other studios like Illumination or DreamWorks usually design human characters, not Disney. That's a big letdown for me.
But as the designs (which I didn`t find on that article, but on Google), I do somewhat like the design of the daughter, but not the mother. Billie has a nice, Disney-esque look, while Alice (another Disney character with that name) looks too cartoony.
and the thing that bothers me too are the costume designs, it looks uninspired and lacks character. Literally every other animation studio is trying to do something new visually and WDAS is stuck in the 2010s... like imagine if WDAS never evolved their style and all their iconic movies from the 90s would look like Snow White or Pinocchio... yikes.
