I am covering The Pirate Fairy as part of an all-expenses paid trip with Disney Pictures. All opinions are my own.
One of my favorite interviews from our trip was with The Pirate Fairy’s Peggy Holmes (Director) and Jenni Magee-Cook (Producer.)
I had the pleasure of interviewing Peggy Holmes at DisneyToon Studios as part of an event for The Secret of the Wings and she was just as amazing this time around. She has such a fun, carefree vibe and you can tell she truly loves the Disney Fairies franchise and wants to make the films as perfect as possible. She actually got her start as a choreographer and worked on “Newsies”, which is probably in my top five favorite movie musicals. Peggy uses her background to choreograph scenes in The Pirate Fairy. If you’ve seen the film, you know there’s a pretty terrific song sequence with the pirates and James (Tom Hiddleston). Well, Peggy choreographed that dance herself. She’d film herself doing steps and send it to the animators for them to create the scenes for the film.
The Pirate Fairy took about fifteen months to create and the idea of bringing pirates to Pixie Hollow was actually John Lasseter’s idea. They had been throwing out story ideas for hours. Where would Tink and her friends find themselves next? They knew they wanted a story where the main character would “mess up and run away”, but how would they do that? Where would the character run away to? The story goes that Mr. Lasseter suddenly banged his fists on the table and yelled, “PIRATES!” Everyone fell in love with the idea and The Pirate Fairy story took shape. He even had a hand in designing baby Croc.
Jenni and Peggy knew of the huge responsibility of bringing the world of Peter Pan into the Disney Fairies storylines. Peter Pan is a story we all know and love, and they wanted to be very careful when bringing in James as a young Captain Hook. They checked “every day” to ensure they were preserving the legacy of the classic film, but really enjoyed creating the story arc of the beginnings of Hook and Croc. They were also very proud of the appeal The Pirate Fairy has with boys and girls. Jenni told us her oldest son (13) liked the film and she thought that was a huge compliment.
When asked about future Disney Fairy films, the pair was quite mum, but did let us know they are currently in production on the next film! I can’t wait to see what adventures the fairies of Pixie Hollow bring us on next time. I can only hope we get to see more of the young Captain Hook and company in an upcoming feature.
You can purchase The Pirate Fairy now on Disney Blu-ray + DVD + HD Digital Combo Packs now!
This is such a good family movie and the colors and characters were done in such a brilliant way. Peggy is very gifted to be able to work on this movie and help produce the characters. It looks really hard to do.
That’s neat that Peggy choreographed that dance herself with her background. Fun interview.
Oh how fun that must have been interviewing them. I’m excited to see this movie.
Everyone that I took to see this movie (we had a sneak preview in theater) LOVED this movie. Great job!
This looks like an adorable movie for families! Thank you for your review 🙂
We REALLY loved the Pirate Fairy in our house. My daughter is 4 and has loved all of the Tinker Belle movies.
My 4 year old son LOVES this movie!!! He asks to watch it at least once a day.
We’ve also enjoyed the other tinker bell movies & can’t wait to see more 🙂