Disney+ taps award-winning writer for upcoming Tiana animated series
Disney+ has found its lead writer and director for the upcoming "Tiana" animated series, said to be launching next year.
As reported by Variety, Joyce Sherri has been tapped as the lead writer and director for the musical project.
Sherri has a history of writing and directing short films, including "Beauty", "Forever," "Down, Down, Baby", and The Family Romance." Her most recent writing credit was for the Netflix horror miniseries "Midnight Mass" from Mike Flanagan.
It may seem like a bit of an odd choice given her experience, or lackthere of in the animated space, but there's no denying she's a talented writer. In 2020, she won the Slamdance screenplay competition for her feature "Sweet Sixteen." She was also selected for the 2021 Sundance Institute Screenwriters Intensive.
Disney hasn't revealed much about the upcoming Tiana animated series other than a brief description for the series, which will follow the title character as she “sets off for a grand new adventure as the newly crowned Princess of Maldonia, but a calling to her New Orleans past isn’t far behind.”
Walt Disney Animation Studios, which made The Princess and the Frog, is producing the show. Nathan Curtis is producing alongside executive producers Jennifer Lee and Stella Meghie.
Tiana was first introduced as a Disney princess with the 2009 release of The Princess and the Frog, an animated musical that I personally feel is one of Disney's most underappreciated films. Although The Princess and Frog $271 million worldwide gross was more than Disney's contemporaneous hand-drawn films of the early 2000s, it was still deemed a disappointment by Disney's overall box office standards.
The film has grown in popularity over the years though and Tiana is now recognized by many as one of Disney's most beloved princesses. Not only is she finally getting her first major attraction at Disneyland and Walt Disney World (Tiana's Bayou Adventure), but there are reports of a live-action adaptation on the way too.