Disney Channel Rebuilds Its Sitcom Slate With New 'Vampirina' Series And 'How We Became the Biggest Band in the World'
Disney Channel Rebuilds Its Sitcom Slate With New 'Vampirina' Series And 'How We Became the Biggest Band in the World'
A very strange lull for Disney Channel may finally be crawled out of
We’ve seen Disney bring plenty of their animated films to live-action with remakes, we’ve even seen Kim Possible get the live-action treatment as a Disney Channel Original Movie. The most worrying sight however was the network spent several weeks this year without a single active live-action sitcom on Disney Channel thanks to the confirmed cancellation of The Villains of Valley View, the last domino to fall before Wizards Beyond Waverly Place premiered earlier this week. It was a fact premiere attendee and Good Luck Charlie star Jason Dolley lamented on his Twitch stream. Now, Disney has confirmed that it won’t be alone for too long by announcing two new sitcoms that will premiere on Disney Channel and Disney+ in 2025.
Both using working titles, they are Vampirina and How We Became the Biggest Band in the World. Yes, Vampirina, based on the children’s books by Anne Maria Pace that was first adapted into the Disney Junior animated series from Chris Nee that ran from October 1, 2017 to June 28, 2021 for three seasons and 147 segments arranged into 75 half hours. This new series is said to be “inspired by” the animated series. According to the logline it follows a young vampire girl who leaves Transylvania to attend a performing arts boarding school to pursue her passion for music, while keeping her identity a secret, “something that’s made more challenging when her overprotective father charges an overzealous ghost to live with her at the school”.
It stars newcomer Kenzi Richardson as Vee, Jiwon Lee as Sophie, Shaun Dixon as Elijah, Milo Maharlika as Demi and newcomer Faith Hedley as Britney. The latter two come from the stage, namely touring musicals. Randi Barnes, whose Disney Channel writing work dates back to Brandy & Mr. Whiskers and American Dragon: Jake Long, with 26 episodes of Imagination Movers, seven of Girl Meets World, and four of Coop and Cami Ask the World, serves as showrunner. She was most recently at Nickelodeon’s That Girl Lay Lay. executive produces with Tim Federle, who wrote the original Better Nate Than Ever book that became a scrubbed Disney+ original movie (having already written two book sequels), and was writer and executive producer on the streamer’s other launch day scripted original series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, and Bronwyn North-Reist. Kimberly McCullough directed and executive produced the pilot.
How We Became the Biggest Band in the World follows three members of Electric Bloom, a famous pop group, as they reminisce about the history of their band and friendship, which began when they met in middle school. Its logline tells that “the girls go on a journey to becoming the biggest band in the world and the best friends in the universe.” The cast features Lumi Pollack as Posey, newcomer Carmen Sanchez as Jade, newcomer Ruby Marino as Tulip and Nathaniel Buescher as Lucas. Eric Friedman serves as showrunner and executive producer with Alex Fox and Rachel Lewis, who serve as writers. Legendary singer Diane Warren executive produces with Bahareh Batmang, writing the songs in the pilot Jody Hahn directed and executive produced.
With both series being rather musical, Janice Leann Brown the primary vocalist of Wizards Beyond Waverly Place’s rendition of “Everything Is Not What It Seems”, it seems the collapse of cable has Disney going back to churning out pop stars to make money on music from individual artists and the shows themselves, which it arguably hadn’t tried since Gabby Duran and the Unsittables, which ended in 2021, and we know the track record especially at the network’s peak. Phineas and Ferb also returns next year with the first of two new seasons and that will be full of music, and the two DCOM franchises being kept alive, Descendants and Zombies, are also both musical. And I say let em. It’ll hopefully mean less content write offs.
Source: Variety