Winx Club
Winx Club is an italian animated series produced by Rainbow, with later seasons co-produced by Nickelodeon. It was created and directed by Italian animator Iginio Straffi. It premiered on 28January 2004, becoming a ratings success in Italy and on Nickelodeon networks internationally. The series is set in a magical universe inhabited by fairies, witches, and other mythical creatures, and tells the story of Bloom, a teenage girl from planet Earth who discovers she is a fairy. Enrolling at Alfea College, she befriends four other fairies and forms a group called the Winx Club, fighting a long series of enemies threatening the Magic Dimension, and in the process, discovering her true origins and the fate of her biological family.
Straffi's original storyline for Winx lasted three seasons, but he chose to continue with a fourth season in 2009. Around this time, Winx Clubs popularity attracted the attention of American media company Viacom, who acquired 30% of Rainbow S.p.A. in 2011. Starting in 2010, Rainbow began producing new seasons of Winx Club with Nickelodeon Animation Studio; episodes were jointly written by the Italian and American teams, with Nickelodeon aiming to make the series multicultural and appealing to viewers from different countries. To attract American audiences, Viacom assembled a voice cast that included notable Nickelodeon actors. Invested in advertising for the series, and inducted Winx Club into the Nicktoons franchise. The continued partnership between Rainbow and Nickelodeon on Winx Club led to the development of more co-productions, including Club57 in 2019, on which much of Winx Club staff worked.
The series faced budget cuts during production of its seventh season, resulting in the removal of the Hollywood voice cast and 3D-animated segments. After the seventh season premiered worldwide in 2015, Winx entered a four-year hiatus until the eighth season premiered in 2019. At Straffi's decision, the new season was heavily retooled for a preschool target audience.
A live-action young adult adaptation of Winx Club, Fate: The Winx Saga, premiered on Netflix in 2021 and lasted two seasons. In January 2023, Viacom sold its stake in Rainbow back to Straffi, allowing him full control of the studio's new projects. This included an animated reboot of Winx Club, Winx Club: The Magic Is Back, which premiered in 2025.
Premise
The series follows the adventures of a group of six girls known as the Winx, students at the Alfea College for Fairies. The team is made up of Bloom, the Fairy of the Dragon Flame; Stella, the Fairy of the Sun and Moon ; Musa, the Fairy of Music; Tecna, the Fairy of Technology; and Flora, the Fairy of Nature. In the second season Aisha, the Fairy of Waves, became the sixth member of the group. And in the fourth season, Roxy, the Fairy of Animals, became the seventh member of the group. The main male characters are the Specialists, a group of students at the Red Fountain school who are also the Winx fairies' boyfriends. They include Bloom's boyfriend Sky; Stella's boyfriend Brandon; Flora's boyfriend Helia; Tecna's boyfriend Timmy; and Musa's boyfriend Riven. Unlike their female counterparts, the Specialists do not have magical powers and instead, train to fight using laser weapons. In the third season, the mage Nabu, Aisha's boyfriend, is added to the group of boys. The Winx and Specialists' most common adversaries are a trio of witches named the Trix: Icy, Darcy, and Stormy, all former students of the Cloud Tower school.Winx Club is set in a vast universe with several dimensions. Most episodes take place in the Magic Dimension, which is closed off to ordinary people and inhabited by creatures from European mythology like fairies, witches, and monsters. The capital of this world is the city of Magix—which is located on the planet of the same name—where the three main magic schools are situated. The other planets of the Magic Dimension include Bloom's home planet Domino, Stella's home planet Solaria, Flora's home planet Lynphea, Tecna's home planet Zenith, Musa's home planet Melody, Aisha's home planet Andros, and Roxy's home planet Earth. Some episodes take place on Earth, where Bloom also spent her childhood.
Episodes
Development
Concept and creation
During the 1990s, comic artist Iginio Straffi noticed that most action cartoons were focused on male heroes; at that time, he felt that the "cartoon world was devoid of female characters". Straffi hoped to introduce an alternative show with a female lead aged 16 to 18, as he wanted to "explore the psychological side" of the transition to adulthood. He decided to develop a pilot centred on the conflict between two rival colleges; one for fairies and another for witches. Straffi compared his original premise to "a sort of 'Oxford–Cambridge rivalry' in a magical dimension". In expanding the concept, Iginio Straffi drew his inspiration from Japanese manga and the comics of Sergio Bonelli.Straffi's pilot, which was titled "Magic Bloom", featured the original five Winx members in attires like those of traditional European fairies. It was produced during a twelve-month development period that included animation tests, character studies, and market surveys. The animation attracted the interest of Rai Fiction, which paid for 25% of the production cost in exchange for Italian broadcast rights and a share of the series' revenue over 15years. After holding test screenings of the pilot, however, Straffi was unhappy with the audience's unenthusiastic reaction to the characters' outdated clothing style and stated that the pilot did not satisfy him. In a 2016interview, Straffi said the result "looked like just another Japanese-style cartoon... but nothing like Winx". He likened his feelings about the pilot to an "existential crisis" and chose to scrap the entire test animation despite an investment of over in the completed pilot.
To rework the concept, Straffi's team hired Italian fashion designers to restyle the show and give the characters a brighter, more modern appearance. Production of the restyled series began by 2002, and Rainbow estimated the episodes would be delivered to distributors by late2003. The new name of the series was derived from the English word "wings". Straffi's aim was to appeal to both genders, including action sequences designed for male viewers and fashion elements for female viewers. At the October2003 MIPCOM event, Rainbow screened the show's first episode to international companies. The first season had its world premiere on Italian television channel Rai2 on 28 January2004.
From the beginning of development, Iginio Straffi planned an overarching plot that would end after "a maximum" of 78episodes. Straffi stated that the Winx saga "would not last forever" in 2007, and he intended the first movie to resolve any plot points remaining from the third-season finale. In 2008, Straffi decided to extend the series, citing its increasing popularity.
Nickelodeon revival
In September2010, RainbowS.p.A. announced they had entered into a worldwide broadcast and production deal with Nickelodeon that would see the broadcaster air the series in several territories, alongside co-producing and developing seasons5 and 6 with them, effectively reviving the series. Nickelodeon Consumer Products also secured merchandising rights to the revival in some regions, including the United States. Viacom would finance and staff the revived series, dividing production between Viacom's Nickelodeon Animation Studio in the United States and RainbowS.p.A. in Italy.In February2011, Nickelodeon's parent company Viacom acquired a 30%stake in RainbowS.p.A. for . Viacom originally planned to buy out the entire Rainbow studio, but wanted to keep Iginio Straffi at the helm, leaving Straffi with 70%.
The revived series began with four special episodes that summarize the first two seasons of the original show, followed by redubbed versions of the third and fourth seasons and the fifth, sixth, and seventh seasons. As the production team was divided between two countries, Nickelodeon released a statement commenting on how Winx Club was an unusual production for the company: "It's not our usual practice to co-produce cartoons; we make them by ourselves. But we strongly believe in Winx." Winx Club was officially inducted into Nickelodeon's franchise of Nicktoons, a brand that encompasses original animated productions created for the network. On each episode of the revived series, Nickelodeon approved scripts and all phases of animation. Nickelodeon brought on some of its long-time staff members, such as creative director Janice Burgess, and writers Sascha Paladino, Adam Peltzman, and Carin Greenberg.
On 7April 2014, Rainbow and Nickelodeon announced their continuing partnership on the seventh season of Winx Club, with a planned premiere date of 2015. Straffi said of the season: "It will be a privilege to partner once more with Nickelodeon on this." During production, Rainbow was undergoing a multimillion-euro financial loss due to the box-office failure of its 2012film Gladiators of Rome. They subsequently decided to cut costs on Winx Club, its most expensive show. The CGI-animated segments and California voice cast from the previous two seasons were deemed too costly to continue using for the seventh season. As with the previous two seasons, the copyright to the seventh season is co-owned by Rainbow and Viacom. The first episode aired on 22June 2015, on Nickelodeon in Asia, followed by its American broadcast on the Nick Jr. Channel on 10January 2016.
The president of Nickelodeon International, Pierluigi Gazzolo, was responsible for arranging the co-production partnership and became a member of Rainbow's board of directors. In addition to financing the television series, Viacom provided the resources necessary to produce a third Winx film. In 2019, Iginio Straffi commented on the two studios' near-decade of continued work together, saying that "the know-how of Rainbow and the know-how of Nickelodeon are very complementary; the sensibilities of the Americans, with our European touch." Winx Club opened the opportunity for Nickelodeon and Rainbow to collaborate on more co-productions, including various pilots from 2014 onward and Club 57 in 2019.