Girl of the Year 2014 movie

The new Girl of the Year (GOTY) Isabelle will have a movie that is set to be released sometime in Summer 2014. It is directed by Vince Marcello (2012's GOTY movie "McKenna Shoots for the Stars" and Disney Channel's original movie "Teen Beach Movie"). It was written by Jessica O'Toole and Amy Rardin. The movie was filmed from May - June 2013 and the girl playing Isabelle is 14 year old Erin Pitt. 

Pitt was considered for the role of Renesmee from the final Twilight franchise movie. She is one of six children and is from Ontario. She played on of the little campers (Junior Rocker "Audrey") in the Disney Channel original movie "Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam" that was released in 2010. Pitt had three roles in a 2012 horror film "Silent Hill: Revelation 3D" as Dark Alessa, Alessa Gillespie and the younger version of Sharon DaSilva. She dances and plays violin. Most recently, Pitt was in the movie "Against the Wild" where she and her brother must survive after a plane crash in the wild. She looks a lot like a young Hayden Panettiere in "Against the Wild". 

More of the released cast:

• Jade (Isabelle's sister) - Grace Davidson
• Chloe - Saara Chaudry
• Luisa (one of Isabelle's best friends) - Devyn Nekoda
• Gabriel (listed on IMDb as "tap dancer") - Matthew Edmondson

I'm not sure why the movie isn't being released with the doll (I was asked by many costumers if we had them), but my guess is that it is a marketing strategy to bring people back to the stores in the summer/fall to get them to buy more. 

The plot of the movie is not known but will be related to the three books Isabelle has. The first book, titled simply Isabelle, is about Isabelle being excited to start her first year at her new dance school (Anna Hart School of the Arts) and how she begins to doubt her talent when she meets the other students. The second book, Designs by Isabelle, Isabelle again struggles with how she compares to other students but begins to focus on the costumes of the plays and helps her sister. The third and final book, To the Stars, Isabelle, Isabelle is invited by her dance idol (Jackie Sanchez) to go on tour which Isabelle eagerly agrees to but learns that her classmates, Reneta, who isn't very nice, was also invited. The show begins to fall apart so Isabelle tries to her Jackie and ends up learning a lot about her dance idol and learns how she, herself, can inspire others around her. All of Isabelle's books are by Laurence Yep, who wrote 2008's GOTY Mia St. Clair's books. 

One of the articles about the casting search read:

"Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Martin Chase Productions are currently in pre-production on the seventh film in the American Girl series, “American Girl 2014″. This is the current working title of the film. The award winning casting director, who was formerly the executive vice president of feature castings at Walt Disney Studios, is auditioning actors to fill the lead roles. Additional casting for supporting and day player roles will take place as soon as the main roles are cast. A few of the roles being cast are a 10 year old girl with exceptional ballet skills for the lead role, a 12-15 year old ballet dancer to play the second lead role, and another 10 year old girl. Also up for grabs is the role of an ethnically diverse adult actress between the ages of 24-40, who also has expert level ballet skills. Shooting will take place in May throughout June, 2013.

“American Girl 2014″ centers on Blanche Palmer, a lively and energized 10 year-old girl who is very happy and full of life. Blanche has a dream of being a professional ballet dancer, but she has a bit of stage fright when dancing. This performance anxiety prevents her from exhibiting her true amazing talent. Blanche has an older sister Jade who is considered the very best ballet dancer in her school. The two enjoy a close relationship with each other, however Blanche always feels like she is living and performing in the shadow of her sister’s talent. To complicate her life even more, Blanche has a competitor named Renata who is the same age and dances with perfection since her parents hired a private coach. Renata is very pretty and very testy, and she criticizes Blanche for small mistakes in her performances. Jackie Sanchez, a recently retired world class ballerina, then becomes a role model for Blanche and her sister."

On IMDb the movie is listed as "American Girl Blanche." This is not the real title of the movie and obviously is not the real name of the GOTY 2014. American Girl puts out fake names, especially when looking for actors so that the real name is not released. 

UPDATE: the American Girl website states that the movie will be released on DVD/Blu-Ray in July of 2014. 

New Girl of the Year!!

Today (January 1, 2014) was the first day people could purchase the 2014 Girl of the Year (GOTY) doll!!

Her name is Isabelle Palmer and she's a ten year old ballerina who has a hobby of making clothes. She has blonde hair with pink highlights and green eyes (they're really beautiful). She lives in Washington, D.C. and goes to a dance school (Anna Hart School of the Arts) with her older sister. She makes ballet costumes but struggles with adjusting to her new dance school. Isabelle also struggles with her self esteem as she compares herself to the other dance students. Her best friends are Luisa (a modern dancer) and Gabriel (a magician).

She has pink hair extensions which cause her to be more expensive doll at $120 (normally dolls are $110). The general hair extensions cost $14 so even though you're paying more, you're saving $4. Some people said that they had issues putting the hair extension in. I haven't tried to do it myself but there are directions that come with her hair extensions. 

The lines at the store (the Washington, D.C. one) were wrapping around the store, both upstairs and downstairs. Ironically, many people didn't even know that the new GOTY was being released today (they had just come on their day off). People waited in line for as long as an hour to buy Isabelle and her clothing and accessories. People who had lined up before the store opening all went directly to the Isabelle displays and started grabbing stuff.

Isabelle has a lot of clothing. Quite a bit of it is just single pieces of clothing like "sparkly scrunchy pants" or "practice top". I suppose it's like that because you can mix and match almost all of it. Unlike Saige (2013 GOTY), whose clothing cost $24+, a lot of Isabelle's clothes are $12 or $14 for one piece. On the website, there are about 14 single pieces of clothing or specific outfits that come together. There are 20 mix and match outfits in total for girls to create. Girls can match three of their dolls outfits with human sized clothes. The outfits are very interesting and many are asymmetrical and very different than past GOTY dolls. 

Isabelle has a cat and a dance case which comes with ballet slippers, hair accessories and stickers to decorate the case with. She also has a little studio where she makes her dance clothes. It consists of 24 pieces, some of which are a body (mannequin) display, sewing machine (needs 2 AAA batteries), a closet, stool, a table... It's a lot of stuff and is $275. She also has a barre which comes with several things as well (a water bottle, rubber/plastic mat, and a few other little things). She has some pretty cool things that girls will love.

Nearly everyone who came into American Girl today bought an Isabelle doll. I went into the stock room to check for something and overheard someone say that we had sold 275+ Isabelle's within the first two hours of the store opening [I can neither confirm or deny that this is true]!!

We did not anticipate the amount of sales and people for today but we still were well-stocked and didn't run out of anything. 

The store had some fun things as a celebration for the new GOTY. From 12-4pm we had crafts outside of the top level of the store and from 1-2pm we had a dance performance outside of the Macy's down the hall from the American Girl store. I wasn't able to go to the crafts but I did walk by the dance thing on my break and saw a lot of spectators. We also were giving out giftcards and free Isabelle tshirts for the American Girl dolls. We ran out of those pretty quickly, probably due to us not realizing how many people would come today. 

The store was unbelievably busy but the girls had a lot of fun and were always very excited for Isabelle. Many people asked us to open Isabelle for them at the register so that they could carry her home or around the rest of the mall.