Trivia / Journey of the Spark

• Based on a Dream: Imaishi first conceived the story after having a dream of Twilight's friends, Spike, and Princess Luna^note who was once planned to be a main character walking on a log over a gushing waterfall. One of the film's concept artists drew up a picture of it.
• Creator Breakdown: Imaishi ceased production of the film due to stress and health issues, in part caused by malicious rumors spread about the crew's legal entanglements with Hasbro. Repeated brushes over the film's cancellation only further alienated Imaishi from the fandom and the show itself, to the point where she effectively disowned the project. It was later placed in the hands of the film's voice director David Doyle, who is expected to release the project as an episodic audio drama instead.
• The Other Marty: Several actors have signed on and dropped out of the project mid-production, most notably Jenny Nicholson of Friendship is Witchcraft fame, who was replaced by Double Rainboom's Emily Koch as Rainbow Dash.
• What Could Have Been: Journey of the Spark was most notably intended as a feature-length animated Fan Film, with several storyboards, concept artwork, and even completed animation made public. However, Imaishi broke down late in production and left it in the hands of the rest of the creative team, who have expressed interest in keeping the story alive as an audio drama. However, the potential doesn't end there:
  • The story actually had its roots as part of Imaishi's improvisational parody series, My Little Pony: The Brony Edition, as a goofy three-act musical.
  • The film was planned to serve as its own Grand Finale to the show based on the first two seasons in order to attract more than just the Periphery Demographic of the show. The team later felt that doing so would confuse newcomers freshly going into the series, and thus placed the film between seasons 2 and 3 to strike a better balance between newcomers and old fans.
  • In September 2013, the decision was made to completely overhaul the movie's script when the writers realized how bloated the story had become, clocking in at nearly three hours. The result was many characters and subplots being either diminished or cut entirely to keep the focus on the Mane Six, including:
    • Discord was originally written to be more villainous, and in fact was planned to be (presumably) Killed Off for Real in one of the earliest drafts of the script. Negative fan reaction led to him being written closer to his lighthearted depiction in the show, albeit with a slightly darker edge and a hint of his Heel–Face Turn in season 3 very much a possibility.
    • Princess Luna was to accompany the Mane Cast on their journey to find Twilight, while also battling Nightmare Moon as a Jekyll & Hyde persona that would manifest whenever Luna felt intense jealousy towards Twilight's relationship with Celestia. This would have then led to Discord manipulating Luna into becoming Nightmare Moon once more as a last resort for when all his other plans fell through.
    • The Cutie Mark Crusaders had a much larger role in which they would stumble into the Canterlot dungeons a la The Goonies and learn of Discord's true plans for Twilight. This would have tied into yet another subplot involving Princess Cadance (to have been voiced by Kira Buckland) and Shining Armor, who were trapped in the dungeon and freed by the CMC so they could help search for Twilight.
    • Trixie would have made an appearance, along with two original Changeling characters, Shryll and Kryl.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Fans reacted negatively to early animatics of the film, demanding something closer to the source material than the darker and more personal story Imaishi wanted to tell. The harassment only became worse when a cease and desist letter from Hasbro leaked online, leading to Imaishi suffering a Creator Breakdown, shutting down the film's production, and washing her hands of the entire affair.

---