Together, with the counterparts of her pony friends, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rarity, and Fluttershy, along with her assistant Spike, Twilight will have to deal with the various magical happenings in Canterlot High that originate from the mirror portal.
Later works put Sunset Shimmer, introduced in the first film as the main antagonist who betrayed her former teacher Princess Celestia but later reformed, in a leading role in place of Equestria's Twilight Sparkle.
However, the Canterlot Shorts from 2017 were produced by Boulder Media, an animation studio located in Dublin, Republic of Ireland, that Hasbro acquired in 2016.
[3] However, in the United States and Canada, the first two films, Equestria Girls and Rainbow Rocks, had limited theatrical screenings in select cities before they were released on home media (by Shout!
In writing the script of the first film, Equestria Girls, Meghan McCarthy went back to the self-titled two-part pilot episodes of Friendship Is Magic, where Twilight Sparkle is sent to Ponyville for the first time and forced to meet new friends.
The second film released in 2014, Rainbow Rocks centers around Twilight Sparkle, Sunset Shimmer and friends' activities against evil sirens using music.
In the film, the alternative universe counterpart of Twilight Sparkle, a student at Crystal Prep, is forced by Principal Abacus Cinch to disrupt Friendship Games (a sporting event held every four years with Canterlot High) with magic.
On October 3, 2015, CEO of Hasbro Studios Stephen Davis said that a fourth film, subtitled Legend of Everfree, was in development.
Subsequent specials (Rollercoaster of Friendship, Spring Breakdown, Sunset's Backstage Pass, Holidays Unwrapped) were produced to fit around the length of 44 minutes.
[10] The specials were broadcast on Discovery Family on Saturdays from June 24 to July 8, 2017, as a part of the channel's "Summer Splash" seasonal event.
[11] The first of the specials, "Dance Magic", focuses on the protagonists' attempt to enter a music video contest to win an amount of prize money, which they plan to use to help repair Camp Everfree; the second, "Movie Magic", follows the protagonists, who were invited to a film studio tour, encounter a series of incidents while the filming was taking place, and begin a group investigation; in "Mirror Magic", the last of the specials, Sunset Shimmer takes Starlight Glimmer to a tour of the parallel universe, and a corrupted mirror slowly influences a girl.
The story follows Rarity's acceptance of a summer job as a costume designer for a new amusement park and the strain that it puts on her friendship with the other girls, particularly Applejack.
Presented in an omnibus manner, the special follows the protagonists who prepare for, and enjoy, the parallel universe's equivalent of Christmas and holiday season.
Feature films Rainbow Rocks and Friendship Games are each accompanied by a series of animated shorts released online.
A plan to release a series of Equestria Girls animated shorts online sometime in 2018 was first mentioned at Hasbro's 2017 Investor Day event held in August that year.
As well as normal animated shorts, each season also includes a number of interactive shorts (initially labelled as "Choose Your Own Ending", before re-labelled as "You Choose the Ending") which utilize the interactivity function of Discovery Family Go platform (and previously that of YouTube, before such function was disabled for child-oriented videos in January 2020).