The Dragon Prince creators Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond announced the next chapter of the series: The Dragon King. During a panel at San Diego Comic-Con, Dante Basco (voice of adult Zym), Jack De Sena (voice of Callum), and Kickstarter’s Andrew Marks gave fans a first look at music, artwork, and a teaser title sequence of this new project.

Temple of Geek spoke with Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond to dive deeper into The Dragon King, what we can expect, and how the fandom can help bring the project to life.

The Dragon King Explores New Angles of Beloved Characters

It has been seven years since The Dragon Prince first aired. Now, the characters that fans know and love have grown up and will face new adventures. Both Aaron and Justin agree that they are excited about every aspect of this new chapter that they get to explore.

Justin says:

It’s super cool because we get this opportunity now to take the characters… The last time we saw them, many of them were late teenagers or early teenagers or not even teenagers. And now we’re in… Some of them are in their mid-20s. Some of the older characters are in their 50s, 60s. So moving everybody forward in that way lets you reset a bunch of things about them. They’ll still be themselves, obviously, but it’s going to be really, really fun to be able to play in a totally different sandbox with the same characters. That’s going to be really fun.

Everyone is coming back in The Dragon King. Aaron and Justin let us know that Ezran, Zym, and Callum will all become much more powerful.

Aaron says:

Ezran and Zim, obviously, you can see the image, are… Zim is not even full-grown, but he’s already massive. He’s going to be bigger than his dad when he’s full-grown. But he’s very powerful, and Ezran’s become very powerful, and they are making the world the way they want to make it, and they’re changing the world, and they really, really are doing it. Ezran’s always been able to talk about it, but now, for the last seven years, they’ve had a chance to really build something new in Xadia, but there’s this new character. Who is a significant challenger and a disruptive force that is going to manifest, and that’s a big part of what they’re dealing with.

Callum’s going to be super powerful. Callum’s got a couple more arcana. I don’t want to say how many, but he’s like almost arch-mage.

Justin goes on to add:

Because of the time difference and because of what the characters have been through, you’re going to see totally different parts of these people that we haven’t seen before, which is super exciting to explore.

Jack De Sena Brings Authenticity to Callum’s Character Over the Years

During the panel, Aaron and Justin discuss the fact that Callum was written specifically with Jack De Sena in mind. Aaron Ehasz worked closely with him on Avatar: The Last Airbender and knew he was perfect for this series. Over the years, Jack continues to bring a fresh perspective on the character, allowing Callum to feel authentic and relatable episode to episode.

Aaron says:

I loved working with Jack on Avatar, and Justin and I had been… Honestly, I think it might have been literally 10 years ago at a Comic Con, we were on a fan panel, and we were just like jamming with Jack afterward. […] That guy’s funny. He’s so smart. He’s awesome. Anyway, we were working on this new story. I think we had a specific character that was ish in the category. We were like, ‘We’ve got to make this. This is Jack’s character. We have to figure out how Callum matches and merges with Jack as we wrote it out.’ So that’s kind of how just… I think a lot of writers and creators, you start to find people you like working with and they become a kind of basis for how you think about the creative and how you plan.

It was easy to plan for a character that we could be co-creating with Jack because we knew his voice. I knew he was wonderful, but we underestimated his capability. Even then, I mentioned in the panel how much I’ve learned from him in the last seven years working on this show. So yeah, he’s incredible to work with.

He goes on to say:

He’s constantly pushing for a level of authenticity to who Callum is and how he’s changing and what Callum is grappling with, how Callum is growing. He pushes on every script, every record. He’s asking questions and you can hear it in his voice. You can hear it in his presence. But also Jack gives you enough insight into his process when you’re working with him. You can get a sense of how he’s approaching it and what he’s trying and be a part of that. I don’t know how he’s having to describe it, but as a performer and an actor, he’s really a creator.

How Fandom and Community Supports This New Project

Fans of The Dragon Prince have a chance to get involved with uniquely supporting The Dragon King. The fandom community has always been important to the creators, and now the community can make its voice heard. Currently, the project is pre-launching on Kickstarter!

Justin says:

Go sign up to find out all the upcoming stuff, basically. Yeah, we’re super excited. The biggest thing about Kickstarter is that it allows us to get really close to the fans. Because it keeps us in control of the franchise in a really cool way that you might not get if you have other bigger partners coming in. But also it’s a chance for fans to really interact with us and tell us what they want, what they think is interesting, and all of those kinds of things. Even more than we know about before, which is something we’re very excited about. We’ll talk more about that in the coming weeks.

But the whole idea is that Kickstarter is really, really good at bringing together communities. We already have this amazing community that already wants to come together. So giving them the platform that enables that and enables the kind of cool filmmaking and animation we want to do. It just was perfect. It really worked out. That’s why we wanted to have them on the panel and all that kind of stuff. Because we really believe in the partnership.

Be sure to sign up for notifications on the Kickstarter page! Justin walks us through how to do just that:

If you go to Kickstarter and you search ‘The Dragon King,’ you will find it immediately. I don’t want to list out the URL because it’s a lot of work. But just search the Dragon King, search Kickstarter. It’s on all of our socials, TDP official, and all of the things. Sign up for Notify.

Once the Kickstarter campaign goes live, those who have signed up early will be among the first to know! The first trailer is coming soon, so don’t miss out.