Ah, Hollywood - from my personal experiences, I have learned that nothing's a guarantee there until it's 100% absolutely perfectly confirmed. You guys know how long I've been trying to make a certain movie I made as an AGSM four years ago into a real movie? Yeah, that long.
Along the way, I've hit many highs and lows, periods where I was sure it was happening only to get my hopes crushed. I thought we were going to get into production three separate times over said four years, only for something as minor as the fate of another movie or an intern misunderstanding the company's submission rules to crush those hopes.
Luckily, I think I'm on the right path now - I have an assistant director now (here's a fun bit of trivia - her favorite American Girl doll is Rebecca!), a casting director that worked with Zendaya and on the Madame Web movie, and am submitting my script EVERYWHERE - so fingers crossed.
But enough rambling about my own life. While thinking about all of that, I thought about the two - no wait, three - no wait, five! - American Girl doll movies that were considered, but never entered production. Three were for specific dolls, while the other two were blanket American Girl movies based on the entire line. We only know a bit of what those movies would have entailed, but I tried to gather as much as possible for this list! So, here goes!
Julie: An American Girl Musical - When the Kit movie was premiering in theaters in July 2008, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, who produced the original 4 American Girl movies (Samantha, Felicity, Molly and Kit), said that the next doll they were going to make a movie for was Julie, and it would be a musical released in movie theaters. The rumored release date was 2012, and there are archives of it being still in development for as long as 2010, but I assume after Kit's movie did poorly at the box office, no studio would commit to releasing it in theaters, leading to AG to pivot to modern-based direct-to-DVD films like McKenna (which DID release in 2012), Saige, Isabelle, Grace and Lea.
An American Girl: Tenney - There were no reports of this one being fully in production, but American Girl did post some filming snippets in 2016. I scoured the AGDN archives for reports on this happening, as my blog was active in 2016, but I couldn't find the specific posts - however, I did find a post from Small Dolls In A Big World, a site that was active in 2016 (but is no longer active) with the images. As Tenney wasn't the Girl of the Year like originally plannet and AG pivoted from direct-to-DVD releases to streaming releases with partners like Prime Video, Tenney's movie was quietly cancelled without even being announced.
Original Film American Girl Movie - This was only announced in one article in June 2018, but Original Film, the production company that would go on to make the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, briefly partnered with Mattel Films to make an American Girl movie. There was an announced search for writers, but nothing materialized, as the project was clearly canned seven months later...
American Girl: Kavi Sharma - The Movie - Another one-line mention in an article, but at the same time that Corinne's movie was greenlit and put into production by HBO Max and Cartoon Network in May 2022, it was announced that a second American Girl movie was going to be in production and premiere in 2023. Due to the release date, I assumed this was for Girl of the Year 2023, who ended up being Kavi, but due to HBO Max cancelling projects in production, especially kids and family content, the fate of the two movies were in limbo. Luckily, Corinne's movie was saved by Amazon Prime and Netflix, but by the time the projects got canned... Corinne's movie was already done. Kavi's wasn't even filmed yet. So while Corinne got saved, Kavi didn't...
MGM/Picturestart American Girl Movie - A new wave of "An American Girl movie is coming!" articles came in February 2019, when MGM and producer Erik Feig of Picturestart took the rights from Original Film to make a live-action American Girl movie intended for release in theaters. However, a few years later, MGM got bought by Amazon, and much like what happened to Kavi's movie, a change in ownership could mean the cancellation of projects. So MGM let the rights expire, and now, the theatrical American Girl movie is in development at Paramount Pictures and Temple Hill Productions, with Lindsey Anderson Beer attached to write.
And technically, we can count the three times I thought they were going to make Rebelle, right? Haha, just kidding. We're talking official AG movies, not "you made the first version of it a gazillion years ago with your dolls."
What AG movie that never got made would you have wanted to see the most? I'll be honest, I'm curious about ALL of these, but the two that catch my eye the most are the Kavi movie and the Original Film AG movie - Kavi because, well, she has a special place in my heart and it pains me about how underrated she is, and the Original Film movie just for the hilarity of seeing the same logo Fast and Furious movies start with before an American Girl doll movie.