If you’ve been waiting for the next installment in The Chronicles of Narnia film series, you maybe waiting for long, long time:
Walden Media, which produced the first three Narnia films – “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” (2005), “Prince Caspian” (2008) and “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” (2010), apparently no longer hold the rights to the movies. What is more, the C.S. Lewis Estate must wait a number of years before they can resell them to Walden or another studio, NarniaWeb.com revealed.
Douglas Gresham, the stepson of C. S. Lewis, confirmed the news in a radio interview to Middle-Earth radio back in October. ChristianCinema posted an excerpt from the conversation:
“If you’re aware Walden’s contract with the [C S Lewis] Company has expired, that’s true. And that leaves us in a situation that, for a variety of reasons, we cannot immediately produce another Narnian Chronicle movie. But it is my hope that the Lord will spare me and keep me fit and healthy enough so that in three or four years time we can start production on the next one,” Gresham said.
My wife and I enjoyed the movies, but in discussing them later, we found we were each reading the books back into them. We know a film cannot fully replicate works of literature, even simple little books like the Narnia tales. Yet, things we considered essential to the Christian themes they contained were either transformed or left out completely (as just one example, Aslan cutting the dragon skin off Eustace with a claw, and it hurts — just is giving up past besetting sins always does, God forgive us). But then, their production values were high and they did lead to many more books being sold, I have heard. So on balance, this is not good news. Time to buy some new sets for our youngest grandchildren, I guess.
I agree with Deacon Harmon in that I think the producers didn’t quite understand the messages in the books or thought that some scenes were weak needed rewrites to hold the audience to the story. I was greatly disappointed in how the Aslan/Eustace scene was handled in the Dawn Treader. It’s one of the most beautiful scenes in the whole Narnia series and the movie producers got it completely wrong. So, perhaps the Lewis estate will continue on with someone who understands the stories and can present them faithfully.
The movies took a hatchet to Lewis’s themes.
Perhaps it would be beneficial to release the books into the public domain? I mean for the greater good that is. This is one of the reasons why long copyright periods are a problem.
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