Not necessarily. While Journey of the Spark is a completely original story set within the universe of the show, I wouldn’t consider it more original than the source material it is based off of.

My reasoning behind this is that many people criticized Chris Columbus for making the first two Harry Potter films far too faithful to the original source material. But see, to me, that’s not necessarily a bad thing if the source material is remotely good and if the material works, you SHOULD stay faithful to it.

With Journey of the Spark, I very much want to make a film that pays a loving homage that stays incredibly faithful to Lauren Faust’s original vision while implementing my own vision in terms of the story. Because what works with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic really fucking works. So why shouldn’t I stay faithful to it?

Its a loving tribute to Lauren as an individual and the work that she, as well as the team from DHX Media, put so many hours of hard work and labor into creating.

Because the way I see it, since we don’t have Hasbro hovering over our shoulders, we essentially have the creative freedom to tell the story in the vein of what Lauren Faust wanted to do originally but didn’t have the freedom to do. So even though she herself is not working on the film, her vision still lives on in the heart of the story.