LOS ANGELES, Oct 9 ― Eight-season Netflix series Spirit Riding Free, the story of a girl, her friends, and their horse-riding adventures, is generating a 2021 animated film, just as the series itself was based on 2002 feature Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.

Though Spirit Riding Free has only been around in its current form since 2017, it's already produced 52 episodes and eight seasons' worth of story arcs.

The animated series was itself spun off from 2002 movie Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, shifting primary focus from the horses to their human companions.

In fact, the stallion of Spirit Riding Free is the son of that in Stallion of the Cimarron, and a new film in production for 2021 puts the family line back on the big screen.

An initial logline makes the Spirit movie sound a lot like the series ― it's to follow Lucky Prescott (same name as the lead from Spirit Riding Free) whose family moves from the city to a frontier town.

There, she finds new friendships not only with some of the settlement's other girls but also with an untamed horse called Spirit.

The new movie then sees Lucky and her new pals thrown into a wild adventure when Spirit and the rest of his herd are stolen.

Though the Netflix show's cast is well established, with Amber Frank as Lucky, Bailey Gambertoglio and Sydney Park as pals Abi and Pru, and Nolan North and Kari Wahlgren in support, they've not yet been announced for the movie.

Instead, DreamWorks Animation has put forward director Elaine Bogan of Tales of Arcadia: Trollhunters, 3Below: Tales of Arcadia and its How to Train Your Dragon companions DreamWorks Dragons and Dragons: Race to the Edge, with Ennio Torresan stepping up from the story department in Abominable, Turbo and The Boss Baby to co-direct.

Karen Foster, of the original How to Train Your Dragon, as well as four Kung Fu Panda shorts, is on board as producer. ― AFP-Relaxnews