“When a mysterious “Z” begins appearing as a mark on everyone in the kingdom, Odette, Derek, Alise, Lucas and all their friends work together to find out what it means.”
– Anonymous, IMDB.
The Swan Princess series continues with the newest installment, A Royal Myztery, which was released in March of 2018. Swan Princess 8 was released digitally, originally there were no plans to produce physical DVD copies, but ‘due to overwhelming demand’, a limited run of 1000 DVDs are available directly from the official Swan Princess website. Also on the Swan Princess website is an interview with director Richard Rich regarding A Royal Myztery. He says “In Swan 8 we have done a new story built around Derek and Odette, to capture the loving feelings that they had in the first film. Swan Princess 8 worked really well to give us a dramatic and rejuvenated love interest”. In the same interview, Richard Rich reveals that there are already plans to create Swan Princess 9.
Some thoughts from me (Potential spoilers below)…
You’d better believe I snapped up one of those 1000 limited run DVDs (Which are still available for purchase as of December 2018). Personally I found this sequel pretty entertaining, I originally ranked it on par with Swan Princess 5: A Royal Family Tale (The one that introduced the warrior race flying squirrels). However the group of friends I watched the movie didn’t agree, consensus was that they preferred the previous sequel (Swan Princess 7: Royally Undercover) to this film. I think part of that is A Royal Myztery is really incomprehensible if you’re not caught up on your Swan Princess lore. Characters from previous films appear with no explanation, so if you happen to choose Swan Princess 8 as your introduction to the series you’re going to be extremely confused. For me, that’s part of what I love about this one. While it’s not fair to say that these characters are entirely irrelevant to the plot (AKA, they do exert some impact on the events of the movie), I feel like at least 3 of the returning characters probably don’t have to be there and it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to rewrite their parts out.
Regardless, I continue to enjoy each new installment in the Swan Princess series. It’s fascinating to see what they do with each new movie. I’m actually a little afraid that the series might be ending after the 9th movie… the whole “Let’s avoid a wide release of physical DVDs this time” doesn’t bode well to me. Live long and prosper Swan Princess. I do so enjoy your yearly contributions to my Bad Princess movie collection.
Some behind the scenes info here, but when I host my Bad Princess Movie Nights, I prepare a selection of 8 movies for my viewing group to choose from. If nothing else, I’m really happy that the Swan Princess series has reached the point where I could hold a movie night where all the offerings are Swan Princess films.
Bad Princess Movies 
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