JOTS Ceasing Production as a Film, To Become Audio Drama

Hello Everyone, I’m Jonathan Sirois, Executive Producer of Journey of the Spark. I’m here to give the news that JOTS is officially ceasing production as an animated film. 

There are several reasons behind this, some of which are personal and will not be delved into. Despite the ending of the production, many of the staff wish to remain on board for our future productions. There is no one personally to blame for this. But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Our Voice Director, David Doyle, has stepped up and will be turning JOTS into an episodic audio drama.

Below this post is a letter from the director of the film, Violet Ridenour. Though it may not answer every question, we hope that it’ll give some insight as to what’s been happening with the film as of late. We would like to thank you all for the three years of support you all have showed. We hope you continue to follow us as we branch out and work on our newest creations, The Longest Brawl, and Asura’s Reach.

I’m issuing out these few words because my conscience will feel much clearer for doing so. To the community and those effected by any of my past and present actions, I apologize. When I first began “Journey of the Spark”, I did so with inexperience and a childish attitude that resulted in the damaging of many relations amongst co-workers and friends.

The truth behind a lot of the film’s legal issues is that we did receive a letter from Hasbro’s legal team. However, at the time, many of the staff including myself believed the letter to be a hoax. For further clarification, we showed the letter to many legal professionals and many of them deduced the same thing. Behind the scenes, our legal adviser managed to make contact Hasbro’s legal team and during their conversation, the team was informed of our intentions and that the situation came about through a misunderstanding. Throughout the conversation, we found that Hasbro had no problems with the film itself, but other factors that could be damaging in the long run. In hopes of trying to ensure the film’s release, my legal adviser and I came up with a solution so that Hasbro would feel more comfortable with the film’s release. This process took place over the course of many months after the letter was received. However, by that point, things inevitably blew out of proportion. Outside sources with malicious intent breached our email address and as a result, documents were leaked.

The production’s legal issues were kept quiet because that was what was requested of us by the legal team and our adviser. The footage shown at BronyCon and BronyCAN is the last footage we were allowed to show off as we had planned out the material months before we received the letter. We never meant for things to become this complicated and making this project was always within our best intentions. I will not deny that the team and I made mistakes. I am aware that I’ve messed things up considerably and I won’t run away from that fact. I’ve taken everything that has happened as a means of making myself a better person and I will continue to do so.

Despite what others may say, I very much respect all of my team members even if we may not always see eye to eye. Every decision made on the film is done as a team effort and we take on the mistakes we’ve made together. I am eternally grateful for everyone’s work on this film, past and present. 

However, despite having reached a conclusion to help clear the film’s legal faults, the team and I felt it best to retire the film as a whole. We bit off more than we could chew and we faced immense stress because of it. The rumors that were generated as a result of the document leak was not a factor in wanting to close the film production. It was a carefully thought out decision between me and many of the film’s crew. Though JOTS will continue as an audio drama, it will be produced independently. Me and the main staff will not be involved with its creation as many of the staff and I will be departing to work on other projects that we can build further experience from. 

I understand that a lot of the decisions we took on handling this situation were not respectable and we cannot apologize enough for the confusion. We will all use this experience as a means of learning from our mistakes and we will work harder to ensure that something like this does not happen again.

We thank you for taking the time to read this and we hope that this has helped explain the current situation at hand.

Thank you for understanding.

- Violet