Trivia / Disney Fairies

• All-Star Cast: The films utilize a mix of celebrities like Christina Hendricks and Kristin Chenoweth with professional voice actors like Mae Whitman and Rob Paulsen.
• Casting Gag: Lucy Hale, who replaced Mae Whitman in the remake of The Bionic Woman, plays Tinkerbell's sister Periwinkle
• The Cast Showoff: Tom Hiddleston gets to show off his amazing singing voice in The Pirate Fairy.
• Celebrity Voice Actor:
  • Lucy Liu is Silvermist, Michael Sheen is Dr. Griffiths, Rosario Dawson is Nyx, Chloe Bennet and Danai Gurira are Scout Fairies, America Ferrera is Fawn's second voice, Ginnifer Goodwin is Fawn's third voice, Zendaya is Fern, Brenda Song is Chloe, Jason Dolley (Good Luck Charlie) is Rumble, Tiffany Thorton (Sonny with a Chance) is Glimmer, Debby Ryan is Spike, Pamela Adlon is Vidia, Christina Hendricks is Zarina, Lucy Hale is Periwinkle, Timothy Dalton is Lord Milori, Raven-Symoné is Iridessa, Jesse Mc Cartney is Terence, Thom Adcox is a Dust-Talent Fairy, and Tom Hiddleston is James.
  • In the Latin dub, Cecilia Roth and Ricardo Montaner are Queen Clarion and Bobble (only in the first film), Roger González is Terence, Karina is Lyria, Paulina Holguín is Gliss and the narrator is Dominika Paleta.
• Early Draft Tie-In: The book In The Realm Of Never Fairies, which was released a month before the first movie as a tie-in, has a page for the Ring of Belief, which is what the movie was originally going to be about before John Lasseter had the film redone.
• Executive Meddling:
  • John Lasseter scrapped the first concept for the first film, feeling that it was unwatchable, and ended up taking the helm for the rest of the series after that.
  • A particularly cruel example of Merchandise-Driven. The movies were doing fairly well with the target demographic, and even outside of it... but the toy-line was doing terribly. Guess which one got cancelled?
• Fake Brit: Jeff Bennett does a convincing Cockney accent as Clank.
• Fake Scot:
  • Rob Paulsen as Bobble.
  • Jeff Bennett as Fairy Gary.
  • Jane Horrocks as Fairy Mary.
• Franchise Killer: Diminishing home market sales and surprisingly disappointing merchandise sales (compared to the popularity of its sister Disney Princess franchise and later Frozen) were the reasons given by execs to discontinue the Disney Fairies franchise, with the 2015 film Legend of the NeverBeast marking the end of that series. DisneyToon Studios was shut down not too long afterwards.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The trailer for The Great Fairy Rescue shows Tinker Bell trapped in a jar. In the film it's Vidia who's in the jar.
• No Export for You: A select few of the chapter books, including Prilla and the Fading Fairies and Tink and the Mysterious Leaks, were only released in countries where Egmont or affiliated companies had the local distribution rights for Disney Fairies. This led to their English-language versions only being released in South Africa, and are very rare to the point where most fans don't know they exist.
• The Other Darrin:
  • America Ferrera voiced Fawn in the first film, but was replaced by Angela Bartys for the other films, and finally by Ginnifer Goodwin (Snow White from Once Upon a Time and the future Judy Hopps) in Legend of the NeverBeast.
  • Rosetta was voiced by Kristin Chenoweth in the first three films, but was replaced in the rest of them by fellow Galinda replacement Megan Hilty.
  • In the Latin Spanish dub, Cecilia Roth and Ricardo Montaner who voiced Queen Clarion and Bobbles were replaced by Gabriela Michel and Ramón Bazet for the rest of the films, due to them being celebrities.
  • Richard Portnow voiced Autumn in 2008, but was replaced by John DiMaggio starting in 2009.
• Production Posse: Megan Hilty, Rosario Dawson, Jeff Bennett, Rob Paulsen, and Grey Griffin would later play characters in Craig Gerber's Sofia the First and Elena of Avalor.
• Quietly Cancelled: The franchise was quietly discontinued after the sixth movie, Legend of the Neverbeast, due to the the toy line not meeting Disney's expectations. Not helping is that the studio that did them, DisneyToon Studios, was closed not long after.
• Role Reprise:
  • The Stinger of The Pirate Fairy has Jeff Bennett reprise the role of Mr. Smee, who he's been voicing since 2002.
  • In the Latin Spanish version, Hector Lee also reprises Mr. Smee, having voiced him since Jake And The Neverland Pirates.
  • The Japanese version of The Pirate Fairy has Hook be voiced by Naoya Uchida who's been doing the role ever since House of Mouse with the exceptions of Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories where Chikao Ōtsuka came back.
• Screwed by the Merchandise: The books and films were selling well, however due to poor toy sales, the series was put on hiatus. Legend of the NeverBeast is the last Disney Fairies movie we'll have... for now. That isn't to say the brand has completely died out, as the Never Girls book series would continue past the films (until ending in 2018) and an dark ride attraction based off the brand is in the works for Tokyo Disney Sea's Fantasy Springs area.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to Denise Shimabukuro, Vidia was originally named Invidia. Gail Carson Levine changed it because she didn't like the "in". (That being said, it's possible they would've needed to change it anyway, to avoid confusion with NVidia, the computer components manufacturer.)
  • Early on, Tinker Bell was going to be played by Brittany Murphy before the producers eventually scrapped that. This could have been one of Brittany's last movies before her death.
  • Tinker Bell was also going to be part of the Disney Princess line before they decided to create this franchise.
  • The first film (originally known as Tinker Bell and the Ring of Belief) went through numerous script revisions, and was initially dubbed "virtually unwatchable" by John Lasseter. The Troubled Production was partially the reason that Disney banned direct-to-video sequels for its animated films. The original plot of the film took place in a London where Never Land had disappeared and children had lost their imagination.
  • In The Lost Treasure, Tinker Bell was originally going to wear her standard green dress, but animators realized that the autumnal setting would leave her Exposed to the Elements — so her costume was redesigned.
  • Disney campaigned for The Great Fairy Rescue to get a Best Animated Film nomination at the Oscars — hence the theatrical release.
  • Pixie Hollow Games was intended as the Grand Finale, originally titled Race Through The Seasons before being retooled into a TV special.
  • If you watch teasers of the films, some contain scenes that are either altered or deleted. Namely:
    • In The Great Fairy Rescue, Lizzie was originally more antagonistic, voicing that "Every museum will want one!" after catching Tinker Bell.
    • An early teaser for Secret of the Wings had Tinker Bell confront a shy Periwinkle who is hiding from her in Dewey's library, saying that she knows her somehow. The beginning of the film would've had the rest of the girls with Tinker Bell and Fawn when the former sees the Winter Woods for the first time.
  • According to a DisneyToon Studios crew member, early drafts of The Great Fairy Rescue contained flashbacks regarding an event in Lizzy's father's childhood that involved fairies, and why he was so hard on Lizzy believing in them.
  • An early synopsis for The Pirate Fairy (then titled Quest for the Queen) was that Tinker Bell and co. were, as stated in the title, sent on a quest by Queen Clarion. It would seem that the talent-swap was originally for that plot. According to John Pomeroy, the story drastically changed from the original pitch to what would become The Pirate Fairy.
    • Zarina was originally much more evil, less of an Action Girl and more of a standard Disney villainess.
    • There would have been a scene where the group gets chased by killer wasps.
  • There were plans for a seventh film, Tinker Academy, that sadly got cancelled because of story problems and unfortunately, thanks to Disney quietly shuttering the franchise in 2015 and the closure of Disneytoon Studios in 2018, it is unlikely that it'll be revived. Concept art for Tinker Academy surfaced in 2017.
    • Concept art by Patrick Awa also shows that the story would've centered around Tinker Bell going to the titular school and meeting a new group of fairies called City Tinkers, with the most prominent one being a fairy named Ember.
    • This storyboard of the opening scene shows that the movie would've begun as a flashback to the beginning of the first movie from Fairy Mary's perspective, in which she was supposed to leave for Tinker Academy, but saw Tinker Bell's arrival and talent and decided to stay to teach her, sacrificing her dream of attending the school.
• Working Title:
  • The first film was Tinker Bell and the Ring of Belief; some early promotional material used this title before it was changed to simply Tinker Bell after essentially the entire film was scrapped and done over.
  • Secret of the Wings was originally going to be called Tinker Bell and the Mysterious Winter Woods and is advertised as such on the The Great Fairy Rescue DVD.
  • The Pirate Fairy was originally titled Quest for the Queen, presumably because the plot was changed.

---