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THE WILD SWANS

Animation - Development 2011

An evil stepmother is just the beginning.
Based on the story by Hans Christian Anderson from Sugith Varughese of Jim Henson's "Fraggle Rock"

- Year of production
- 2011
- Genres
- Animation
- Countries
- CANADA
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Budget
- 3 - 5 M$
- Duration
- 85 mn
- Writer(s)
- Sugith VARUGHESE
- ISAN
- 0000-0002-E750-0000-V-0000-0000-I
- EIDR
- 10.5240/BDB8-92CE-BFAD-E64F-23C7-0
- Synopsis
- A musical fantasy that brings modern flair to the classic tale with a spunky tween heroine at the center.
  Eliza must battle an evil sorceress named Arachna who turned her eleven older brothers into wild swans and bewitched her father, the good king of the kingdom, into marrying her.
  After her brothers become swans, Eliza escapes to the forest where she takes shelter with a kindly couple, Mabel and Og. Unable to return home, she lives with them and grows from a self-centered princess into a self-assured and kind young woman.
  Years later, Queen Arachna’s son Jason, now heir to the throne, encounters Eliza while hunting in the forest. Thrilled by her beauty and intelligence, Jason convinces her to return with him to the palace to be his advisor and unknowingly ensconces her in the very room her mother occupied when she was alive. Eliza can’t resist trying on one of the beautiful gowns still hanging in the vast closet just as the palace guards burst into the room, led by Arachna and the bewildered king. But instead of acceeding to Arachna’s demand the girl be thrown into the dungeon, the king is mesmerized by Eliza—the very vision of his beloved dead wife.
  Eliza knows that if their father could just see her brothers the way she sees them, he’d know the truth about Arachna. But since they are swans, their father is blind to their real identity. The only way to get their father to recognize the swans as his sons is to dress them in human clothing.
  Eliza starts to sew shirts for her swan brothers using thread made of forest grasses and leaves. When she places the first shirt on one of her brothers, for an instant, he appears in human form!
  Eliza frantically makes shirts for all her brothers at night in the graveyard near her mother’s stone so she can feel close to her. But the night she’s about to finish, Arachna accuses her of being a witch. Jason must condemn her to be tried as a witch—which Arachna points out means trial by fire!
  As Eliza is taken out before the people gathered to witness her burn at the stake, the wild swans appear from the sky, flying out of the sun. Eliza flings the shirts on them and they are instantly transformed into their human form—all but the youngest who has a swan’s wing instead of an arm because she didn’t finish the sleeve.
  Arachna transforms herself into a horrifying combination of a spider and a dragon and the brothers battle her to the death. Stunned at what his mother was, Jason makes his first act as king to be his last—he will banish himself. Until Mabel and Og appear—back in human form now that Arachna is dead. Jason is in fact their son, whom Arachna stole from them when he was just a babe in arms.
  The people of the kingdom begin to chant Eliza’s name and Jason does his final act as king—he crowns Eliza the new queen. And for her first act as queen, Eliza kisses him.