Why American Dragon Jake Long Stopped in the whole World?

Those who have forgotten or who have a vague memory or who do not know anything about it, let me tell them that a perfect combination of Action adventure, super hero comedy and fantasy, AMERICAN DRAGON JAKE LONG is a American cartoon series which depicts the story of a teenager named Jake Long. Jake Long’s mother is Chinese who married to an American. Here twist is that Jake Long’s mother belongs to dragon family So she has the power to transform herself into dragon That’s why both JAKE LONG and his younger sister have the powers to transform themselves into dragons.

In the series, Many magical creatures keep coming to the real world, American Dragon works to send them back to their whereabouts And especially his Maternal Grandfather “LAOSHI” trains him to do so. Well besides the magical creators, DRAGON SLAYER huntsman & huntsgirl are two of main enemies of American dragon. Another fun fact is that,

JAKE LONG is AMERICAN DRAGON and And that Huntsgirl is a “ROSE” named school girl and JAKE’s love interest. Both don’t know each other’s reality and fight with the form of Dragon and Huntsgirl.

And the last one thing, JAKE has two friends TRIXIE & SPUD, And they are like chili & spice in this series, I mean they are the laughter source for the viewers, Especially SPUD, honestly, the coolest and funniest character for me is SPUD. So, who made this banging show and how, let’s know know it

THE CREATION STORY OF AMERICAN DRAGON JAKE LONG

American dragon’s creator “JEFF GOODE” was born on 2nd of March 1980, Mr. JEFF is a Television writer and Playwright, Playwright means who writes play’s scripts. and Mr. Jeff started writing Playwright and books at a very young age. AMERICAN DRAGON JAKE LONG is one of those television series which is Created by Mr. JEFF!

Initially he wrote the story of American Dragon only for TV show, Later he wrote two children books on it.

Many people believe that AMERICAN DRAGON JAKE LONG cartoon series is Created on the basis of these two books, and that’s a wrong fact Because the animated episodes of this series were created in between 2002-2004, While the books were published in 2004,

Another fun fact is that JEFF GOODE went to FOX channel before going to Disney channel, And offered them to make his concept a live action series. An executive of FOX loved this idea, and he thought that This may become a good show for harry potter fans. But why would he have thought so?

Because AMERICAN DRAGON had many things similar to Harry Potter Like there is a magical world where they go by train And similarly there is a magical world in American Dragon where they go by train, Means, it was about to be an awesome live action show But the executive who had given the pitch meeting date to Mr. JEFF, left FoX company. And Mr. jeff got? What might he get? Hopelessness bro Hopelessness. But no matter what, it was also necessary to meet this disappointment. Because only after this, between 2002 and 2003, Jeff Goode proposed it to Disney. But this time, not for the live action series but for a cartoon series. And then what?, Disney company agreed, only then its cartoon series was made.

Eddie GUZELIAN & MATT NEGRETE used to work for Disney Company, probably still do. So working in Disney, in year 2002 They worked together on a cartoon series “KIM POSSIBLE”. KIM POSSIBLE, what happened? didn’t hear the name? Well, I hadn’t heard either. But most probably, it is a very famous cartoon series Because a live action movie has also come on it in 2019. Point is that both Eddie Guzelian and Matt Negrete worked with Jeff Goode to develop his concept into a cartoon And named it the “American dragon Jake Long”.

Disney had agreed to air this show So Disney ordered to make 21 episodes of 30 minutes each of American Dragon. Which was prepared by the team of Eddie Guzelian & Matt Negrete in about 1.5 to 2 years. American Dragon was supposed to be released at the end of the year 2004 But postponing the date, Disney released it on US TV’s “Toon Disney” channel on January 21, 2005. Total two seasons were created of it, in which total 52 and a special episodes are included.

After broadcasting the last episode of 2nd season on 1 September 2007, This show was cancelled and no new seasons of it were produced. Now your question! Why no new seasons were produced? Brother, Answer is quite simple Because the show was no longer relevant for children. Even you might have noticed that in season 1, All The Characters Including Jake Long Were Younger And in season 2, The ages of all the characters including Jake, were increased. I mean,

The character designs were done in such a way that all the characters seem to have a little grown up. And that’s why it was not extended to 3rd season. Because then in the 3rd season all the characters would have grown up more. And then Disney would say, hey brother! we have to make the show for little kids, And what’s this, you are doing? So at the end, they cancelled this show.

Now back to the topic, From 2007 to 2010, older episodes of American Dragon were re-runned several times on Toon Disney channel, And in 2009, when Toon Disney became Disney XD, Even then its older episodes were aired on Disney XD. Another thing is, now DISNEY XD has been changed to “MARVEL HQ”.

CHANGE IN INITIAL CONCEPTS

Now listen a cool thing, one is “The BIBLE”, means sacred scripture of Christians. There is another Bible, Bible of TV series You can call it TV show Bible or Pitch Bible too. Basically it is a reference document which is prepared and given to screen writers by the creator of a show. But why? Because it contains all the important information related to the particular show, Like character in the show, show’s story engine, settings, pilots and future seasons etc.

In our case, JEFF GOODE is the creator of American Dragon Because he prepared the concept and gave it to Disney And Eddie Guzelian & Matt Negrete are the screen writers of American Dragon Means everything shown on screen, they both wrote together. Eddie Guzelian says in his blog post that

Fortunately, we had Jeff Goode’s series Bible. A lot of what Matt and I did as far as developing American Dragon was simply steering it back towards his original vision of the show. But we added some details and shapes from our side And an important fundamental element for what Matt And I contributed And that was creation of character “ROSE”.

Matt and I had decided from even start that We wanted the series to have a real story that unfolded during the season. We didn’t want the show to be just a bunch of standalone episodes and can be aired in any order and didn’t make any impact to the viewers. We definitely wanted a few things to change and develop as the show goes forward. We wanted us to start the show without Jake’s friends knowing Jake’s identity. It was not easy to persuade Disney to do such a series.

In case of kids programming, TV networks avoid from running this type of shows. They under-estimate children so much that they think that these are children, what story they will understand. They should be shown only standalone episodes. And Deep Down Disney Channel thought similarly that no child would pay that much attention to its story line.

But Matt and I made up our mind to not let this show kids audience grow up to say that ohoo!! American Dragon… Even it was a show?, No story arc it had, just normal show it was. Rather we wanted him to say that, oh brother! American Dragon…..what a show that was!!!!! (extra exclamations) Remember, when Jake had fight with dark dragon for first time, what a cool interesting episode that was, I haven’t forgotten till today.

JAKE NEEDS A BOYFRIEND

This time Matt says, I remember when we were working on the pilot of American Dragon, an executive of casting office said to us, “I mean, Jake needs a friend who is a boy”. Yup! you heard it right. At first Jake and Trixie were the only ones to be shown as friends at school. But after this incident, Eddie and Matt together created Jake’s Male friend “SPUD”. And a fun fact is that

earlier they were thinking about keeping SPUD name ROB. But they felt that ROB seems to be the name of a discipline child instead of a skateboarder. That’s why after much thought they named this new character “SPUD” Which is absolutely a cool name for a skateboarder.

WHAT IS, WHAT WAS, WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN?

Again Matt says, “sometimes decisions must be made not by choice but by necessity.” For example We were about to call this show simply American Dragon but Since there was already a movie in existence with this name, So Disney’s legal department suggested us to name it other than this. And then we considered dozens of names Like American Dragon: NYC, The first American Dragon, Considered even ‘Extreme Dragon’ as name which seems like an energy drink’s name more than a TV show’s.

Finally we decided to have the title keeping JAKE LONG name with American Dragon But there was also a problem here that JAKE LONG: AMERICAN DRAGON or AMERICAN DRAGON JAKE LONG Which name should we opt? And yeah! Finally we named it “American Dragon: JAKE LONG. Problems didn’t stop here, Once again Disney’s legal team asked us to change THORN’s name. Now a quick fact-

The name of ROSE’s 2nd identity was THORN originally, And later it was changed to Huntsgirl.

But why? Matt tells himself about it that a character already exit in DC comics And she also has dual identities with the both names ROSE and THORN, That’s why Disney asked them to give a new name to ROSE. Here too, they considered dozen of names like IVY, POISON etc. But at the end they named ROSE’s 2nd identity “HUNTSGIRL”.

And 3rd thing is that initially JAKE’S dad also was aware about his dragon identity. Until Eddie & Matt have 5 scripts written of season 1 of this show. Then it came to their minds that if Jake’s entire family would be aware about his dragon identity then It wouldn’t be much trilling. And if Jack has to keep his identity hidden from his dad, then the show can create more fun and suspense. That’s why Eddie & Matt revised all the scripts with some changes about JAKE’s family And today you also know that how the interesting story of American Dragon is.

UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF

Eddie Guzelian says that when American Dragon was started broadcasting on TV, Many online haters immediately started accusing us of stealing and copy the premise and idea behind the show. But we were not surprised by those allegations Because when people watch something new, They automatically try to find something in it that Where they have already seen that particular scene or concept.

It’s true that Matt and I took inspiration from many other programs and sources for this show Like Harry Potter, star wars, Buffy the vampire Slayer etc. But the funniest thing was that most of the haters accused us of copying programs we hadn’t heard even heard of, instead of original sources. And that programs were “DANNY PHANTOM” & “JUNIPER LEE”.

Juniper Lee was a show run on Cartoon Network, that was quite similar to American Dragon. Such similarities in both the show, is probably just a co- incidence. And such parallel development is very common all time in entertainment industry.

SEASON 1 v/s SEASON 2

If you have seen American Dragon Jake Long on TV in your childhood, then you may have remembered well that It’s both seasons were aired on Disney XD channel, And as I have already told you in starting that the age of all the characters was extended in season 2. Would you like to know real reason behind it?

So listen, actually Jack and Rose’s character showed a significant age difference due to character design. Means Jake looked quite smaller than Rose in age and height too. And to make their love angles more perfect and real, Eddie and Matt redesigned the Jake’s character. A quick fact – The new character designs were created largely inspired from Japanese animation or Anime.

Along with the character redesign, the story arc throughout Season 2 focused more on Puberty, Love, Youth & Family, rather than on comedy as the main focus. Which season did you like more, do tell by commenting. And if have missed this show on TV, No worries because since January 2021, this series is being streamed on Disney+Hotstar, Where you can watch it Anytime in multiple languages.