Walden Media’s Michael Flaherty (recently added to the list of Oxbridge speakers) has confirmed that Walden and Fox are in talks to make a new Narnia movie, a follow up to last winter’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Interestingly, the book they are considering for adaptation is not The Silver Chair (the next book that Lewis wrote), but The Magician’s Nephew (chronologically, the first book in the series).
A rather unexpected move, it seems. It is unsure, at this point, what will come of the talks, but it is interesting to see what might happen.
After seeing how the movie version of Prince Caspian butchered the book – I am not inclined to waste any more time & money watching any more butchery of CS Lewis’ masterworks. The movie Prince Caspian has none of the charm of the book, Aslan is almost non-existent, and it is BORING. If It weren’t for the names, I would not have recognized it as part of the Narnia series. Now I hear they butchered Dawn Treader by adding some silliness about 7 swords. I suppose in The Magician’s Nephew, they’ll omit the “offensive” parts about Aslan’s creating Narnia by singing it into existence.
The reason the Lion, Witch & Wardrobe was such a success is because it was faithful to C.S. Lewis’ original work.
Publius – I guess it is to each his own. I think Prince Caspian was a better film than the book. (While that might seem shocking to some, I don’t consider books outside of the Bible to be works of Canon.) Prince Caspian was my least favorite of the books, so anything they did to improve the story, I was all for.
Dawn Treader I have seen at least 5 times. They didn’t “butcher” the story at all. The Seven Swords makes sense, as does the green mist.
Don’t make assumptions about what they will and won’t do in a film.
LWW was a success, not because it was faithful, but because of all the Narnia books, it’s the only one that people recognize by name. It’s also the only one that appears on lists of the best selling books in the world.
Sure, it was pretty faithful to the story, but if you remember back to when it first came out, people through a fit over the deeper magic not being mentioned.
Prince Caspian’s change was in the timeline. Instead of the Pevensie’s sitting around a campfire for an hour and a half, followed by a duel, they managed to bring the characters together earlier.
Dawn Treader was done with logic as well. The Green Mist comes from the same place that the Dark Island came from. I defy anyone to explain Lewis’ logic in the appearance of the Dark Island in the book. To me, that’s what makes the Green Mist a possible and logical extension of that island.