I wasn’t as involved with the leaks as I had hoped, but one thing i remember pretty vividly is how the cast of the mane 6 Clearly stated how sad they will be stop working together on MLP. It was some documentary or some other video.

It’s almost as if Pony Life truly wasn’t planned to exist until pretty late. Perhaps only after some leaks.

Just something I thought I’d add..

@Eragor14
IIRC, it was always the plan to start with the movie and not do it on Discovery Family. At the time I had an impression that Hasbro was tired of being forced to have their shows on that channel first and could not wait until they were free from their leash.

They planned to have the film in theaters. The decision to turn it into a Netflix exclusive was actually pretty recent (early 2021?), likely caused by the pandemic.

@Background Pony #E7A8
Hmm…that’s quite interesting. Honestly, I didn’t know that there was so many disagreements about how to best handle G5 within Hasbro. Nonetheless, it does explain why Pony Life would need to be created, if G5 had to be pushed back due to the change of plans. Honestly, it really makes me wonder what other plans changed during this time period (such as wether the film was always intended to be the start of G5, or if they wanted to do a TV special instead, as well as if they originally planned to release G5 on Discovery Family like they did with G4, before deciding to release it on Netflix instead).

And yes, I knew from the very beginning when Imalou was announced as an artist for G5 that she didn’t draw up any of the concepts, as her art style is very unique and looked nothing like the concepts. Not only that, but I can imagine that there were many different artists that were submitting various character designs at the same time, with most of the designs end up getting rejected. After all, that tends to happen during the creation process of a show, especially one as important as the relaunch of a franchise.

Nonetheless, I still think that a documentary would be fun. It would give a more direct insight into the creation process of G5, as opposed to the vague comments that you gave me here.

@Eragor14
There was a leak from Hasbro in 2017 where they were discussing plans for G5. Back then, it was still going to be the reboot, with three of the mane 6 changing their races. From the e-mail exchanges we may deduct that the decision people didn’t like or were confused by the whole idea. Why is Pinkie suddenly a pegasus, etc. Perhaps this eventually led to the change of plans… but not immediately. None of the leaked concept arts were from Imalou, but by another artist they already had before. So they must have experimented with the old idea for some time, even after the leak, before eventually going with the new Mane 5.

IIRC, this whole chaos eventually might have forced them to delay G5. Maybe this delay caused them to make Pony Life to fill the gap between season 9 (which was also revealed in the leak to be the final season of the show) and the new generation. Some people say Pony Life was mentioned in the leaks, but I don’t remember it. And I cannot check, because I no longer have those files.

@northern haste
Must have been a very early idea, one that was scrapped pretty early into the development process. After all, a lot of work went into the current designs for the G5 Mane Five, and as such the original concept of rebooting G4 would have likely been discarded shortly after the conclusion of FiM.

Regardless, it makes me wonder: what led to the team changing plans? What caused Hasbro to decide, “You know what? Our original idea of restarting the existing FiM story is perhaps not such a great idea after all. It would be better to have a continuation of the FiM world with entirely new characters instead”? Considering they are officially releasing the old concepts, I would love to see a documentary (even a short one) that goes into the process of how a story that started off as a reboot turned into a sequel story, and how the rebooted Mane Six turned into the entirely new Mane Five. It would certainly make for an interesting watch.

@SombodyElse
Early versions of G5 was a straight up reboot

Wait there was more to it than just concept art? Was there actually supposed to be something with these G5 style mane6?

AstridJack.