So the first Narnia movie has really turned out to be a big hit. As of today 1/3/06, it has grossed $225 million and this is just in the United States.
The kids should only age a year or so before the next one. Does anyone know what the delay is in announcing this movie? They should already be filming it. I remember Harry Potter 2 was filming the week after the first one was in theatres.
Readers of the Narnia books will be among the first to admit the books waver in quality. Prince Caspian is a lesser story.
But now that Narnia’s edged out King Kong in weekend Box Office totals, maybe the filmmakers are moving in that direction.
I think Aslan looks/acts like a wuss in the trailers I’ve seen.
Well, I’ve read all 7 of the Chronicles of Narnia books, and enjoyed 5 of them immensely. “Prince Caspian” was probably the weakest of the bunch, in my opinion. (“A Horse and His Boy” was both forgettable and unrelated to the other stories).
A sequel is almost inevitable, of course. And this is one case in which a movie might be an improvement on the book… but I think they’d be wise to skip directly to “Voyage of the Dawn Treader.”
No way. If they’re going to make them, they’ll have to do them all, and do them in the proper order, or they’ll have all of us Narnia purists flinging poo at them.
I saw an omnibus volume at Borders that was in this order:
Excuse me, but this is wrong. Put them in the order in which he wrote them. (Harper-Collins claimed that Lewis said The Magician’s Nephew should be first. Nobody in my family, including me, has ever found anything like that in all of Lewis’ works, and we’ve read pretty much everything he ever wrote.)
There’s ongoing debate between the “read them in Narnian chronological order” camp and the “read them in publication order” camp. If you accept the Narnian chronology point of view then your list is correct, since the action in *The Horse and his Boy * takes place during the period covered by The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
IIRC, CSL’s stepson & estate administrator Douglas Gresham kinda sorta announced a few weeks ago at Crystal Cathedral that Prince Caspian was in pre-production.
I think the movies may well be released in Original Order- and hopefully, the estate will publish it thusly. (CSL did respond to a letter from a boy who preferred to read them chronologically. CSL agreed. Thus, the justification for the New Order. The estate considers that letter CSL’s authorization, while many of us just think he was being nice to the kid.)
If PC is that weak a story (it’s been a while since I’ve read it), Disney/Walden could go the BBC-PBS route & combine it with VoDT.
All I can say is, The Last Battle will make an …interesting… movie.
So do the other books stay with the kids? Or do they explore other stories in Narnia?
My wife’s company has been approached about working on “Prince Caspian”. They’ve been working on Pirates for a while doing Franchise management. Basically what they do is make like D&D style sourcebooks for internal use to make sure that the multiple franchises maintain continuity even though the different publishing arms of Disney are more or less seperate companies.
Erek
In brief, attempting to avoid giving away any of the plot:
Prince Caspian has the original four children coming to Narnia hundreds of years later.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has Edmund, Lucy, and their cousin Eustace sailing east three years (Narnian time) after Prince Caspian.
The Silver Chair has Eustace and fellow student Jill heading north to save the prince of Narnia some time after the events in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
The Horse and His Boy is set during The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and has to do with Narnia’s sister country. The Pevensies make an appearance, but have little to do with the actual story.
The Magician’s Nephew has Diggory (later Professor Kirke) and neighbor Polly in a prequel to the entire series.
The Last Battle has Eustace and Jill once again and has to do with the fate of Narnia, being the last book of the series.
They stay with the kids at first, but as of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Peter and Susan are “too old to come to Narnia” and are essentially replaced by two younger kids, Jill and Eustace.
Sorry. I need to correct that. It’s Digory, not Diggory. Too long since I read the book and it’s a kinda old-fashioned, pretty British name.
I could also give you a list of every way yet found to get to Narnia off the top of my head even though I haven’t read the books in years. (I don’t know why this kind of stuff sticks in my head.)
For a little more specificity, The Silver Chair takes place on the order of 70 years or so after TVOTDT
The Horse and His Boy takes place in the timeframe between when main battle ends and the children return from Narnia, for those who’ve seen the movie but not read the books.
I was trying not to give away part of the first couple chapters of The Silver Chair by pinning it down to a more specific time. Though I guess you’re right. It doesn’t really tell anything that the reader won’t eventually get soon enough. (I guess I just know the stories so well that something like that will trigger a whole bunch of stuff for me.)
I kinda thought that maybe this was the case, but I figured it’s a pretty minor plot point that CSL doesn’t put much effort on concealing. Having just read the story last night it goes about a page before the mystery is revealed.