I never said that all great novels should be made into movies. But many have been arguing or implying that making a great movie out of a great book is wrong or does nothing for the book. So I’ve been trying to show that this is not always the case, and that great movies can help re-introduce great stories to a next generation. It’s not the only way though, and I never said that all great novels should be made into movies.
I don’t necessarily think that we are obligied to make every great novel of past generations into a movie to re-introduce it to the next generation, but there should be something done. What do you propose we do to renew interest?? If someone tried to rewrite the work they would be damaging the original artist’s work. If another tried to write a sequel to the great novel it is very likely not to live up to the quality of the original work(s). Yes, individuals can/do encourage young readers to pick up certain great works, but that doesn’t give the boost to the story as broadly as a movie.
A large advertising scheme for an old novel would create some interest in the novel, but it is unlikely. There’s no guarentee of selling a certain large quantity of books and little else to make the money to justify the advertising.
Basically you need to present more with your argument, such as what should be done to renew interest in a great novel? Or present a reason why a book should not be made into a movie. Or why no books should be made into movies. Simply saying that not all books should be made into movies isn’t even part of the argument since that was never stated.
It’s not my job to renew interest in a great novel. The only thing that occurs to me immediately is to reprint the novel. You were the one who said, “As for an acceptable reason for making a movie out of a book, if increasing the number of readers of the book isn’t one, what is a good reason?” Getting new readers for a great book isn’t a good reason to make a film of it. The only reason to make any film is because you think it will be a good film.
Movies do not exist for the purpose of increasing the sales of books or restaurant meals or of anything else. There are investors who think that that’s the case, but that’s because they don’t actually care about the quality of the movie, the book, the restaurant meal, or anything else. They care about creating tie-ins so that they will make more money. I can’t stop them from doing that, but I’m not obliged to buy into their beliefs.
I have to say I view the prospect of a Narnia with a little bit of dread and a lot of I-told-you-so. Since the Lord of the Rings has been in production, and especially since the first film was released, I’ve wondered what Hollywood would learn from it. My greatest fear was that they would butcher Narnia. I even posted on it here, weeks ago.
The term ‘Development Hell’, as used on sites like the former ‘Coming Attractions’ movie progress/review site, generally means that production is effectively stalled for some reason, and no progress is being made. This isn’t quite true of the Narnia movie. Progress is being made, but slowly, and many major aspects of production have yet to be finalised. For example, various special effects houses are submitting test animations on spec in order to get the contract for all the effects and animation work. I’ve seen some of this work, but obviously cannot reveal any of the content or where I saw it.
FWIW, I think that a Narnia movie made with the same love and care as the LOTR trilogy will be wonderful, and I look forward to seeing it.
As for all this stuff about the ‘correct’ order, nobody can know more about this than the author, and we have Lewis’s own words as posted above.