The 7D is an American animated television series produced by Disney Television Animation, which premiered on Disney XD on July 7, 2014. It is a re-imagining of the title characters from the 1937 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by Walt Disney Animation Studios. The first season consisted of 24 episodes. On December 2, 2014, the series was renewed for a second season. On April 25, 2016, Disney XD announced that the series would be cancelled after two seasons. The show aired its final episode on November 5, 2016, with 44 episodes produced.
The 7D is a group of dwarves who protect Jollywood from the Glooms and other threats. They are the descendants of the dwarves that founded Jollywood. The members of the 7D are:
The 7D was placed into production in June 2012 for the Disney Junior channel with characters redesigned by Noah Z. Jones (who also made Fish Hooks for Disney before). In an interview with IndieWire, series director Alfred Gimeno said that the pilot episode was done in Flash, but the series was changed to traditional 2D which added production value as Flash was design heavy. The storyboards and pre-production were done at Disney. Animation was produced by Digital eMation in South Korea, Toon City in the Philippines, and Wang Film Productions in Taiwan. Ruegger also said that the 2D is also better suited for the show's style.
The show's theme song and many of the in-episode songs are done by Parry Gripp. He describes the song as "in kind of a punk rock style...It's pretty fast and has guitars and the tone of my voice is a bit nasal and aggressive. But the music in the show really varies." In an interview with Geek Mom, Gripp said that he was asked to pitch song ideas for various Disney shows, and that The 7D clicked with his style. He estimates he wrote about 120 songs for the first season, although many are very short and their styles vary. Composer Keith Horn does the orchestration in the show.
Entertainment journalist Jim Hill has noted that some have related the voice ensemble to Marvel's Avengers since it features actors who have voiced in popular cartoon shows. He also noted how many of the crew have worked on Animaniacs, including Tom Ruegger, Sherri Stoner, Paul Rugg, Deanna Oliver, and Randy Rogel. Among the voice actors, LaMarche had voiced Brain, and Jess Harnell had voiced Wakko. Voice director Kelly Ward said "God forbid if anything were to happen when they were all in one place because the voice-over industry would be dealt a crippling blow". The cast usually recorded in ensembles of two to four characters when possible, with Ruegger editing the timing afterwards for characters that recorded separately.
Scott Menville, who voices Sneezy, said that the show takes place before Snow White was born so the Evil Queen from the film will not be there. He also said it is a contemporary take on the film as the characters are hip to the current generation and its pop culture references. Jevon Phillips of Hero Complex also placed the series 30 years or so before Snow White. Ruegger said that the show's demographic differed from his previous works with Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain; however, he was also encouraged by Disney Junior to expand the demographic to include parents.
The 7D debuted on July 7, 2014, on Disney XD, on the Disney Junior block on Disney Channel on December 26, and on the Disney Junior channel in 2015. In Canada, the series began broadcast on July 13 on Disney XD. It premiered on Disney Channel in Southeast Asia on September 7. In Australia, Disney XD began broadcasting the series on December 1.
On December 2, 2014, the series was renewed for a second season, where Ruegger planned to make 39 half-hour episodes. The season premiered on Disney XD on January 23, 2016. The series had guest stars like Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne as Hildy's parents, Fran Drescher, Wallace Shawn, Amy Sedaris, Petros Papadakis, Jim Belushi, Kate Micucci, Phil Hendrie, Cheri Oteri, Jay Mohr, Jimmy Weldon, Michael McKean, George Takei and "Weird Al" Yankovic as well as Debbie Reynolds in one of her final roles before she died. On April 25, 2016, co-executive producer Mr. Warburton posted on his blog that the second season would be the series' final season and that the crew would be moving on to other projects. The series finale aired on November 5, 2016.
The 7D premiere broadcast ranked number 2 overall among Disney XD's animated original-series premieres for kids 2âÂÂ11 and kids 6âÂÂ11.
The series received mixed reviews from critics. Brian Lowry of Variety wrote poorly of the show, claiming that it has none of the charm of the source material, and that its plots "fall into a sort of No Kid's Land in terms of age groups". Rob Owen wrote in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the characters were blandly drawn, and that the show was just a chance to capitalize on the film.
The 7D won Outstanding Original Song at the 44th Daytime Creative Arts Emmy Awards. At the Golden Reel Awards 2014, the episodes "Buckets/Frankengloom" received a nomination for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing â Sound Effects, Foley, Music, Dialogue and ADR for Short Form Animation Broadcast Media.
In June 2014, Disney Publishing Worldwide released "The 7D Mine Train", an endless-runner video game where the player chooses one of the redesigned 7D dwarfs as their game avatar to pilot a mine car through various levels of the mine, picking up gems. It is loosely associated with the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train attraction at Walt Disney World which opened in May 2014.
Disney also released an online game on their Disney XD website called "The 7D Dwarf Track Builder" where players can assemble a mine track or sky bucket course according to the dwarfs' specifications.