2013 animated film
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls is a 2013 animated musical fantasy film directed by Jayson Thiessen, written by Meghan McCarthy, and produced by DHX Media Vancouver for Hasbro Studios in the United States. It is the first installment in Hasbro's Equestria Girls franchise, which serves as an anthropomorphic spin-off to the 2010 relaunch of My Little Pony. The film and franchise's introduction also commemorates the 30th anniversary of the original My Little Pony toy line.
Equestria Girls re-envisions the main characters of its parent franchise, normally ponies, as teenage humanoid characters in a high school setting. Set between the third and fourth seasons of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic television series, the plot involves Twilight Sparkle pursuing her stolen crown into an alternate world, where she transforms into a humanoid teenage girl. While learning how to behave locally, Twilight encounters the parallel universe counterparts of her pony friends, who join her in the search for her crown.
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival on June 15, 2013, and entered limited release in the United States and Canada on June 16, followed by a home media release on August 6. The film received mixed reviews, with most criticism directed at the character design, writing, plot, and characterization. It was followed by three sequels, Rainbow Rocks (2014), Friendship Games (2015) and Legend of Everfree (2016) – all of which were more positively received.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.