USA: Disney hopes to create a Harry Potter-like franchise with a film version of the beloved C.S. Lewis classic "The Chronicles of Narnia".

Record ID: 775053

  • Title: USA: Disney hopes to create a Harry Potter-like franchise with a film version of the beloved C.S. Lewis classic "The Chronicles of Narnia".
  • Date: 17th December 2005
  • Summary: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) SKANDAR KEYES, ACTOR WHO PLAYS EDMUND IN THE FILM, SAYING: "It was good because it meant that I got to go on a journey and I got to do so many different things and I had to, I could, I wasn't sort of one general sort of type of person because Edmund goes from end of the spectrum to the other,
  • Embargoed: 1st January 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Reuters ID: LVA725TLCRC2V755IIVERGJAN36O
  • Story Text: A film starring a talking lion, an evil witch and a magic wardrobe may give the Walt Disney Co. something it desperately needs -- a Harry Potter-like franchise to rejuvenate its lagging film business.
    Disney's film version of the beloved 1950 children's book, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by Christian author C.S. Lewis, hits U.S. theaters on December 9, riding a massive marketing push. The movie, which cost an estimated $250 million to make and market in North America, represents a bet the studio can score a box-office hit on the order of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," which took in $181 million worldwide its first weekend in November.
    The story tells of four children, the Pevensie siblings -- Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter -- who travel through a magic wardrobe into the land of Narnia, home to talking animals, a wicked witch and the god-like lion, Aslan.
    Actor William Moseley who plays the eldest sibling, Peter, in the film, said he had loved the book as a child but as a teenager, he was apprehensive before reading it again, wondering whether he'd like it as much.
    He said, "When I came to fifteen and I started auditioning for the part of Peter in the "Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe", I read the book with a slightly more cynical aspect. I thought it was kind of cool, I just didn't think it would appeal to me but I read it and I loved it, and I really wanted to be a part of it."
    Sharing Peter's responsibility for looking after the two youngest siblings, is Susan, played by Anna Popplewell.
    Recalling one of the most challenging aspects of shooting the film, Popplewell spoke about her fear of rats and how she told director Andrew Adamson that she hoped that she had no scenes with rats.
    Popplewell said, "Silly me, I assumed that every animal in this shoot is completely computer generated, so no occasion to use real mice but anyway these mice turn out to be real, and I am afraid I actually chickened out. None of the shots with the mice have me in the them."
    British actress Tilda Swinton, who plays the evil witch in the "Chronicles of Narnia", put in a fabulous performance. She feels that evil is even more fascinating when presented in a cold, frosty and quietly ruthless manner, rather than an obviously heated, shouting and screaming visage.
    Swinton thinks that the release of the film in current times is very relevant. She said, "It's about real children in a real world at a real time, who are war children, who are evacuated from the blitz in London in 1943 or whenever and sent away into this parentless land."
    For Adamson, the trick to directing the "Chronicles" was making the world of Narnia as real as possible.
    Adamson said, "My approach to the movie is that it's real, that Narnia is a real world, it's not like the Wizard of Oz, it's not, this is something that's happened in their imagination, or Peter Pan where it's happened in Wendy's imagination. To me Narnia is a real place, it always was as a child. Lucy goes through that wardrobe and steps into a world, and that world has to be believable."
    Meanwhile, for actor Skandar Keyes, who plays Edmund, the only child amidst the four Pevensie children who has shades of gray -- the changes and developments in his character made the role even more interesting to him.
    Keyes said, "It was good because it meant that I got to go on a journey and I got to do so many different things and I had to, I could, I wasn't sort of one general sort of type of person because Edmund goes from end of the spectrum to the other, if that makes sense."
    In another development before the release of the film, a letter from Lewis, posted on the literary Web site Nthposition.com, revealed that he had strong feelings about how his book should be used.
    Lewis' letter to BBC producer Lance Sieveking, who had created a radio version of his book which had met Lewis' approval, included the line, "I am absolutely opposed -- adamant isn't in it! -- to a TV version."
    Although Lewis, who died in 1963, said he would have considered a cartoon version, his letter suggests he might not have approved of Disney's interpretation, particularly its computer-generated Aslan.
    Even as the first release of "Chronicles of Narnia" is expected to make a splash in December thanks to its blend of magical fantasy themes and a strong Christian slant, Disney and its partner in the film, Walden Media, already have a rough outline for a second Narnia film, based on "Prince Caspian," that could hit theaters as early as summer of 2008.
    Disney and Walden stand ready to make up to six more films based on "The Chronicles of Narnia," the second most popular children's book series ever, with 100 million books sold, behind J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series with sales of 250 million books.
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