Rise of the Mages

Winter Knight is a 1991 animated fantasy adventure film directed by Garrett Fredrickson, and is inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale The Snow Queen. Featuring an ensemble cast including Jesse Corti, Corinne Orr, Charles Nelson Reilly, Frank Welker, and several other actors, it was produced by Toei Animation, Nightstorm Entertainment, Nippon Television Network, and Goldcrest Films and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States and Toei Company in Japan.

Winter Knight was released to the United States on December 18th, 1991 to positive reviews from critics and doing modestly well at the box office grossing $32.7 Million. In later years, the film has gone on to become a cult classic thanks to home video and television broadcasts of the film. Winter Knight is the first original film Garrett Fredrickson directed.

Plot
COMING SOON

Voices (INCOMPLETE)
MORE VOICES AND CHARACTERS TBA
 * Jesse Corti as Clayton, a person who lives in a city nearby where Rosie lives, whom he is shown to have a crush on
 * Corinne Orr as Rosie
 * Charles Nelson Reilly
 * Frank Welker
 * Carl Andy (Cameo)

Production
Development on the film started in 1984, when Fredrickson started to get more into animation, two of the films that influenced him were Twelve Months (1980) and Twice Upon a Time (1983). While watching Twelve Months, he got the idea to make a fantasy film that was set in winter, and when he managed to get the ideas for the film together, he got in contact with Toei Company about providing the film's animation and for Japanese distribution. Toei ended up agreeing to do so and the first draft of the script was written in May of 1986.

Despite the script being done and revised a few times in 1986 and some additional work done with the character designs, pre-production wouldn't officially start until after the release of A Penguin's Memories in June of 1987, and after taking a bit of a break from working on A Penguin's Memories, he resumed working on the new project, but he knew help would be needed with co-financing, since his own company, Nightstorm Entertainment, which he had founded in 1985, and Toei Company were the only companies involved with the movie. In August of 1987, however, Goldcrest Films came in as an investor for the project's American Production along with the Nippon Television Network for the Japanese production. Weeks later, Warner Bros, who previously turned down the offer to release A Penguin's Memories because they didn't know how to market it, became highly interested to release the film in theaters. Like how he did with A Penguin's Memories, Fredrickson managed to get some well known actors for the film along with some actors who had experience in some other English dubbed animes, including having Peter Fernandez as the voice director for the film.

In February of 1988, production on the film officially began, and the film was eventually completed in October of 1991

Release
Winter Knight was released in the US on December 18th, 1991. It was previously planned for release in November of 1991, but Warner Bros rescheduled it to December of that year in order to try and avoid competition with Beauty and the Beast and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West.

Box Office
Winter Knight grossed $32.7 million during it's theatrical run. While it did make a good amount of profit back, Warner Bros didn't do a lot of marketing on the film, and it partly struggled due to the success of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, however, it did manage to recover it's losses from home video sales.

Critical Response
Winter Knight received great reviews from critics, earning a score of 88% on Rotten Tomatoes with it's critical consensus reading "Whimsical and beautifully animated, Winter Knight shows you don't need to try and copy the formula of another studio's success to make a good movie.", on Metacritic, the film has a score of 84 indicating "universal acclaim"

Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun Tribune called the film "A magical experience, one that is truly unique in itself where it manages to craft a well written story and updates it's inspiration in similar ways Disney would be able to." He also gave the film 3 out of 4 stars.

Television
The film was shown on HBO and HBO Kids and Family from 1992 to 2004, and again starting in 2017. It was broadcast on pay television through TNT starting in 1998, on Cartoon Network's Cartoon Theatre in 2000, and again in 2006, and on The Hub in 2011 and later on Discovery Family in 2015.

VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray

 * 1992 Warner Home Video VHS
 * 1996 Warner Bros Classic Tales VHS
 * 1999 Warner Bros. Family Entertainment DVD
 * 2004 Warner Home Video Special Edition DVD
 * 2010 Warner Home Video Blu-Ray
 * 2016 Warner Home Video 25th Anniversary Blu-Ray Steelbook