The Hollywood Reporter reports that the Walt Disney Company has decided to no longer partner with Walden Media on the franchise of films based on C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series due to the high budget involved (and possibly because Prince Caspian failed to do as well at the box-office as its first installment). Walden Media, who specializes in inspiring, family-friendly films inspired by well-known books, is now searching for another partner for the high-cost franchise, with 20th Century Fox possibly being a most likely distributor. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third installment, was originally supposed to film in Spring 2009 for a 2010 release.
With the less-than-expected results of Caspian and The Golden Compass at the box office (the latter’s poor results due in part to a campaign against it waged by religious groups), some in Hollywood are wondering if the fantasy genre is worth the large amount put into it. If Warner’s delayed sixth Harry Potter film- delayed in order to avoid competition with Twilight- does as well as the studio hopes it does in its new competition-free opening slot, perhaps studios will be more willing to take the risk.
Myself, I’ve been wondering if they could ever possibly do a ‘Dawn Treader’ movie decently. Compared with LWW and Prince Caspian, the text isn’t great for adaptation.
Of course, if they wanted to leverage a proven recent blockbuster formula, they could make it about Captain Caspian Sparrow.
Ditto. ‘Dawn Treader’ is pretty episodic - the crew sails to various islands, and has a discrete adventure in each place - the island where there’s the pool of water that turns everything to gold, the island with the wizard and the invisible hopping beings, the place where Eustace turns into a dragon, etc. There’s not so much to connect each incident to the next, other than the over-arching quest to find the seven (?) lords who sailed from Narnia, which I’ve never found all that compelling.
‘The Silver Chair’ is a reasonably straightforward narrative, and could totally work. ‘A Horse and His Boy’ is very filmable, and pretty stand-alone, although you’d have to modify the parody-Muslim Telmarines. I’m skeptical of the ‘The Last Battle,’ ever working as a movie, probably because I don’t think the last book works particularly well as a book, but I doubt the film series will get that far.
Yeah, I never thought this was a really good idea to begin with. I saw the first one and it was okay…but I doubt seeing that movie would have given a kid the magical feeling that reading the books did for me.
Other than Harry Potter, has any fantasy series been made into a successful series? His Dark Materials, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Eragon, Spiderwick Chronicles, The Dark is Rising, none of these did well enough for even one sequel.
I’m not sure, but I think part of what I was thinking of is that there’s no great sense of urgency to the plot or the motivations of the characters, which helps a lot in creating a fantasy movie that a lot of people can relate to.
Both ‘Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe’ and Prince Caspian are about fighting to free the kingdom from a great tyrant who’s taken over. The Last Battle is, for most of its length, about a reverse of this, trying to save Narnia from a dastardly plot to doom it without even letting its inhabitants defend themselves.
The silver chair is a quest to save somebody who’s being held hostage, essentially. Horse and his boy takes a storyline about a group of misfits and prisoners trying to escape a hostile land and reach freedom, and mixes in a bit of the ‘fighting against invaders’ stuff halfway in.
Try to boil down ‘Dawn treader’ to an essential conflict the same way, and what do you get? They’re sailing through unexplored territory, trying to track down a bunch of exiles who went this same way decades ago, and also hoping to sail to the edge of the world, or get to Aslans’ country, which is somewhere around here according to legend. Somehow, to me, it doesn’t have the same punch as any of the others.
DQed on a technicality. The Lord of the Rings was written as a novel, not a series. Although it was originally published in three parts for economic reasons, the author always considered it a single work.
I’d say the golden compass did poorly because it sucked not because of any religious campaign. In fact usually a religious campaign against a movie or TV show results in massive popularity, like the southpark episode were the virgin mary statue has her period that had about 9 times as many viewers as any other episode in some country (i wanna say australia) after a massive campaign against it.
I agree that The Voyage of the Dawn Treader doesn’t seem like a good candidate for movie adaptation, but I hope they don’t stop because they haven’t gotten around to The Magician’s Nephew (which was always the most “magical” to me) and The Horse and His Boy, which were my favorites. And I think making The Horse and His Boy not about Muslims and either making the Calormen completely evil “baddies” or (worse IMO) a completely misunderstood culture equal to Narnia would kind of defeat the purpose of their existence.
Harry Potter was also planned as a series, with events building as it went on. Narnia was one book, with others more or less randomly added. I’m only surprised it only made it to two books, but times are tough and Disney can’t afford to spend a lot on an almost certain bomb.
I’m tempted to ask, does that mean it wouldn’t work as well as a movie, or that it wouldn’t fit the standard Hollywood Movie Formula? Because frankly, I’m getting a little tired of movies that fit the formula.
I wept in sorrow & joy during Lion. I didn’t expect to at Caspian or for any other except perhaps Silver Chair until The Last Battle. Then I expect to cry like a baby.
(I have an epilogue idea involving Susan I would love to see.)
Can’t say I’m surprised by Disney’s decision, but I’m still disappointed. Still, I’m sure someone will pick up the mantle.
More or less. I still don’t know that much about the Hollywood business, but I’ve been getting interested in screenwriting, and I understand a bit about the rules of hollywood features.
You can make a movie that doesn’t follow the rules and is wildly popular. Pulp Fiction seems to fit into that category to me. But you need to be good to do that, and I don’t think that starting with a book that doesn’t follow the Hollywood Movie Formula is the best way of doing that.
Of course, that gets us into the question of whether it’s worthwhile making a movie that isn’t going to be ‘wildly popular’…
I think Dawn Treader would work just fine as a movie, and yes, I’m quite familiar with all the books in the Narnia series. They each have their special charm. The only thing that bothers me about Dawn Treader is the book’s ending, which never felt satisfying, but since a sequel is likely in the movie world, maybe that doesn’t matter anymore.
But you need to be good to do that, and I don’t think that starting with a book that doesn’t follow the Hollywood Movie Formula is the best way of doing that.