The Swan Princess (1994) on Netflix
G19941h 30mAnimationComedyFamily
King William and Queen Uberta plan to unite their kingdoms by marrying their children, Odette and Derek. The banished sorcerer Rothbart returns, and Odette becomes a swan by day.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.5/1029,771 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes50%
Trailer
Plot summary
King William and Queen Uberta each have a child, Odette and Derek, and they intend to join their kingdoms by marrying the two. As children Odette and Derek cannot stand each other, but as adults they fall in love. Derek offends Odette when he can think of nothing he loves about her except her beauty, and she refuses to marry him. On her journey home, the banished sorcerer Rothbart, his powers regained, seizes Odette and takes her to Swan Lake. There she is a swan in daylight and a woman again at night, when the moon shines on the water. She befriends a turtle called Speed, a frog called Jean-Bob and a puffin called Lieutenant Puffin. Derek sets out to find her.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Swan Princess (1994)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Richard Rich, who had directed The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron at Walt Disney Feature Animation, was slated to co-direct Oliver & Company until Disney feature animation president Peter Schneider fired him. He then formed his own studio, Rich Animation Studios, with about 26 employees, most of them from Disney, including the company's marketing chief, Matt Mazer.
- The script went through twelve drafts over the course of two years, and Rich then tried to sell it to several Hollywood studios without success.
- The film was created by hand painting cels, a tedious technique that took Rich and his crew over four years to finish. Most of the cel painting was done at Hanho Heung-Up in Seoul, South Korea, and 275 animators and artists worked on the production in all.
- Disney put The Lion King back into cinemas just as The Swan Princess was being released, a piece of timing that Variety described as "sabotage".
- Although it was a box office bomb, The Swan Princess turned into a franchise of nine direct-to-DVD sequels beginning in 1997, with the latest, The Swan Princess: A Fairy Tale is Born, released in 2023.
