Once a Princess, Always a Princess: A Disney Short

In celebration of World Princess Week, Disney launched "Once a Princess, Always a Princess: A Disney Short," a four-minute film honoring timeless storytelling, physical craft, and the power of childhood imagination. Created together with Disney, Fallon, and director Alex Prager, the story follows two young girls in neighboring apartment towers who build an imaginative world together during play, showing how Disney Princess stories give kids a shared language to connect and form lifelong friendships. Beyond the screen, lead young actresses Thea Evans and Ivy Jukes met at an audition years ago and are real-life pen pals, bringing genuine chemistry to the film.

"The enduring strength of Disney Princesses lies in its ability to evolve with each new generation while remaining rooted in stories that inspire courage, compassion, and possibility. That's what makes these characters so meaningful to fans around the world. This year's World Princess Week celebrates this legacy,” said Joanna Balikian, Senior Vice President, Brand Management, The Walt Disney Company.

To bring the story to life, the team anchored every visual decision on screen to physical craft. Master artisans built full-scale "bigatures" as tall as a person inspired by Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Little Mermaid to create depth and forced perspective on set. Background environments used classic hand-painted Disney matte painting techniques, while a 56-piece live orchestra recorded a custom score. Eight mechanical hero puppets, including Flounder and Sebastian, were operated by puppeteers working simultaneously, and bespoke Princess gowns were stitched from scratch by master costumers led by Vin Burnham.

Collaborating alongside Oscar-winning editor Paul Rogers, the production relied entirely on practical magic. Everything from floating carpets to drifting clouds was physically rigged on set, while underwater sequences used classic Hollywood "dry-for-wet" stagecraft with blue-lit soundstages, oversized physical kelp, and wire rigs—without a single drop of real or digital water.

"Practical filmmaking is at the core of everything I do. When they are practical and in-camera, it feels more visceral because the sense of gravity and tactile nature reflect how we perceive emotion as something very physical,” said Alex Prager, Director. “Every effect we used was physically rigged, from floating carpets to drifting clouds. I brought the idea of using practical filmmaking techniques to Disney from our very first conversations because of their history, I wanted go back to their roots; they have always been at the forefront of new technology and finding new ways to tell stories without taking away what made them beloved in the first place.”

"Disney Princesses give kids a shared language that instantly, and sometimes permanently, connects them," said Leslie Shaffer, CCO at Fallon. "Creative Directors Kelsey O'Briant and Tanner Uselmann understand deeply how kids’ imaginations and friendships work and beautifully captured and protected both. It’s what makes this work emotionally lethal, it taps into something real we all have experienced but might have forgotten. To tell this story, we wanted every frame to feel like genuine movie magic: built by hand, played by a live orchestra, and crafted with feature-film care."