Trivia / W.I.T.C.H.

• Acclaimed Flop: The show was generally well received, but network disinterest meant no Season 3.
• Bad Export for You: The comics were originally Cut Short very early in their run in English-speaking countries. This led to a weird case of localised Adaptation Displacement, particularly in the US, where the animated show was considered its own thing, rather than an adaptation. On top of that the comics publisher for those markets, Hyperion, applied quite extensive censorship in both bowdlerised dialogues and redrawn panels.
• Channel Hop: The comics were initially translated to English by Hyperion, but poor sales caused their releases to be Cut Short. Years later, however, Yen Press rescued the comic, making it one of the first titles under their JY label and creating a new translation for it.
• Executive Meddling:
  • The creators of the original comic were removed from the series early on. Disney Italia dismissed them as soon as a project they thought was dead-on-arrival became a major success, and shifted the series into a softer direction than what was intended. The change is evident as early as Issue 7, with multiple sudden plot shifts such as Elyon pulling a Heel–Face Turn and being revealed as "The Light of Meridian", the out-of-nowhere introduction of Caleb as Cornelia's literal dream man, the general focus change to the Crown of Light, etc.
    Alessandro Barbucci & Barbara Canepa: "We conceived of "W.I.T.C.H." together with Elisabetta Gnone, the then-director of girls publications for Disney. We worked for three years in secret on it and she then presented the project to the big bosses at Disney. They thought that this project was crazy, a sure-fire bomb, complete waste of time, and that mangas wouldn't have a chance in Europe anyway (!!!). However, we didn't let ourselves be led astray and worked for another year on it anyway, with a tiny budget and without publicity. And then the series became a worldwide hit. The official version from Disney is, of course, that "W.I.T.C.H." is a product of their brilliant, visionary marketing strategy... the end of the series was then taken out of our hands, we actually had something a lot more intelligent planned for it. Now, as you can see, Elisabetta Gnone and the two of us no longer work for Disney... a really sad story."
  • An interesting example for the animated series. Co-showrunner Andrew Nicholls dedicating a section of his book "Valuable Lessons" to detailing the executive meddling that went on during production of this show, but notes that many of the examples are par for the course in television production. That doesn't stop many fans and forum-goers from believing the show was completely screwed at every turn. See this forum post for a good breakdown on how the contents actually relate to the final product, which some of the executive-mandated changes coming in so early during development that they're better categorized as What Could Have Been more than anything else (such as a shift from girl-oriented comedy to more boy-oriented action).
• Incestuous Casting: In the German dub, Will and Matt are voiced by the Turba siblings.
• International Coproduction: It's a show produced by an independent French studio working together with an American media giant (which owned 49% of it), based on a series of Italian comics also owned by said US conglomerate. All of the writing and original voice acting was done in English by Americans based in Los Angeles (who were officially employed by said French company to save money), while all the other aspects of production like storyboards and music were handled in Paris. Oh, and Fox Kids UK (soon purchased by Disney and turned into Jetix UK) wanted in on the action too, so the writers had to deal with input from four different countries, not counting the three overseas animation contractors in Taiwan, China and Korea.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The original Hyperion English releases of the comic are this. Yen Press, under their JY label, license rescued the series, but the old releases have some Bowdlerisations and a few other differences between translations, while Yen Press opted for a new translation that did away with the censorship.
  • The cartoon has fallen to this as well, to a lesser degree. There's no shortage of places to watch it unofficially, due to it being unavailable on Disney+, but most of them use the same low-quality television recordings, as in most places the show never got a full DVD release. It's relatively difficult to get hold of anything in a higher resolution. In addition, most recordings use the American opening titles, and whilst there's nothing wrong with that, some fans who prefer the international theme song are going to have to look harder for versions of the show with it. (Ironically, only the international openings are actually available in high quality, since the show hasn't been released on DVD in America.)
• No Export for You:
  • The cartoon only saw full series DVD releases (including season 2) in Czechia, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, and Russia - the latter of which doesn't have the original English audio unlike the others. Even with season 1, there's no North American release, though it's on DVD throughout the rest of the world.
  • A whole lot of tie-in material for the franchise, particularly the novels, were very rarely translated to other languages. Except for the first five books by Lene Kaaberbøl (written originally in English, no less), everything else stayed either in Danish, Swedish, Italian or Polish, depending on who wrote it, never to be released outside the local market. What makes it weirder is the fact they were all published by Egmont Group, a Danish publishing house, that normally translates to variety of European languages and was also responsible for printing and translating the comics.
• Out of Order:
  • Season 2's Halloween episode, 'W is for Witch', which in order to air in time for the holiday, had to be shown before 'T is for Trauma'.
  • Episode 16, "Walk This Way", was aired as episode 18 in the US, causing plenty of episode guides to list it as such. It's still 16th on the DVDs though... if you can get them.
• Playing Against Type/Typecasting:
  • Steve Blum as Blunk... but also Raythor.
  • Dee Bradley Baker as Cedric and Frost... but also Martin.
• Production Posse: Greg Weisman brought several of his Gargoyles associates with him for season 2, including Cary Bates on writing, and Kath Soucie and Ed Asner on voice detail. Hong Ying would also be kept on for Season 2, while Wang Film Productions (responsible for one of the more infamously animated episodes of the series) would be swapped out for Dong Woo Animation; who would later work on The Spectacular Spider-Man with Greg.
• Screwed by the Network: Network disinterest foiled Greg Weisman's plans for a third season of the cartoon — as per usual for him.
• Technology Marches On:
  • The flip phones obviously place the comics and show in the 2000s.
  • Much more so with the comics. In issue #2, Taranee asks Will if she can print out her biology project... from a floppy disk.
  • The cartoon was actually ahead of its time in some ways, at least technologically. In episode 10 it's shown that at least one of the girls (Irma) already has a cellphone with a built-in camera (albeit still a flip phone), and in "Ghosts of Elyon" HDTV is mentioned offhandedly, almost as if it were mainstream. Keep in mind that writing on season 1 started in late 2003 (though the series came out a full year later); in the US at least, the first cellphones with cameras came out in late 2002, and cable and satellite providers had only just started offering HD in 2003...
• What Could Have Been:
  • The comic series was envisioned as significantly more serious and with many horror vibes, with what passes as "teen" in Italy (11-16) as its designated audience. Once Disney stepped in and then quickly removed the original creators, most of that went to the bin, the entire franchise was retooled for girls 10 to 12 and whatever arc plots were already started got squashed. For starters, Elyon was being set up as a future Big Bad with We Used to Be Friends angle to her. While many secondary bits and pieces of the original ideas still remained (and the comics are definitely not all glitter and ditzy teen girls), it's a far cry of where the original direction was heading.
  • Sylla was meant to be introduced as a hired mercenary by Dr. Theodore Riddle, to keep an eye on the girls and attempt to steal the Heart of Kandrakar. He also knows the girls are the Guardians, thanks to Riddle using his telepathy to discover their identities.
• Uncredited Role: The entire voice cast is left out of the credits for the show's first season in some episodes while other episodes include them. Season 2 keeps it consistent and credits them from the get-go.
• Word of Gay: Greg Weisman (Supervising Producer and Story Editor of the second season) believes Irma is a lesbian, and that Nerissa is bisexual... once being lovers with Cassidy: "You have no idea what she meant to me."
• Word of God: Because Will controls Quintessence, she is the most powerful of W.I.T.C.H. and one of the most powerful beings in the universe... which is ironic considering she didn't have any offensive powers whatsoever in the first season.

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