The Magician’s Nephew will be the next Narnia book to be made into a movie, Michael Flaherty, co-founder and president of Walden Media, told The Christian Post. That’s the plan being discussed with Fox and the C.S. Lewis estate.
Fox took over the series when Disney, producer of the first two movies, dropped out, disappointed by the financial performance of Prince Caspian. The third movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, has earned well enough to keep the franchise alive.
The Silver Chair would be next if the producers were following the seven-book series’ order of publication.
Instead, the sixth book will be filmed. The Magician’s Nephew is a prequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and tells about the creation of Narnia, and how evil entered the land. It reveals where series icons like the wardrobe and the lamppost came from.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]
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I’m not surprised Disney dropped the franchise. I didn’t even realize the third movie had been released… or made! I watched the first two, and while TLTW&TW has something of the books charm, the sequel was second rate Tolkien in my opinion, having too much in common with every other work of high fantasy, and too little that was original. It had the same problem as the first film as well — the world of C.S. Lewis just doesn’t feel real. When he needs a giant caste or an army of centaurs, he pulls one out of a hat. You never see how the army is fed or what the city does to support itself and neither feel as though they existed before the author needed them. This was easily accepted in books for children, but becmes a more obvious omission on the big screen. But I suppose Fox wants to continue making the evangelical version of Tolkien for its own mandated audience.
It should be noted that the author preferred the series be read in order of its own chronology once it was complete, so The Magician’s Nephew should be considered the first book, even though it was the sixth published.
I wish Disney had taken this to heart when they started adapting the series… they’d never have had a chance to screw up my favorite Narnia book (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader)!
@Petréa: You didn’t like the last half hour — the Pevensey family and Reepicheep meet Chtulhu? (Yes, they did depart from the book quite a bit…)
I actually haven’t seen the latest movie; it was pretty obvious from the publicity that practically nothing of the actual book was left, so I didn’t want to give anyone involved with it my money, and I don’t feel entitled enough to download it. I might watch and cringe when it gets to basic cable. Or maybe I’m better off leaving it alone entirely.