Film
Skeptical that any cinematic adaptation could render the more fantastical elements and characters of the story realistically, Lewis never sold the film rights to the Narnia series. In answering a letter with a question posed by a child in 1957, asking if the Narnia series could please be on television, C. S. Lewis wrote back: "They'd be no good on TV. Humanized beasts can't be presented to the eye without at once becoming either hideous or ridiculous. I wish the idiots who run the film world realize that there are stories are for the ear alone." Only after seeing a demo reel of CGI animals did Douglas Gresham, Lewis's stepson and literary executor, and the films' co-producer, give approval for a film adaptation.
The first novel adapted was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe released in December 2005. Produced by Walden Media and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, the film was directed by Andrew Adamson, with a screenplay by Ann Peacock, Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus. The movie was a critical and box-office success, grossing over $745 million worldwide and as of March 2011 ranked 38th on the list of highest-grossing films in nominal terms. Disney and Walden Media then co-produced a sequel The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, released in May 2008, which grossed over $419 million worldwide.
In December 2008 Disney pulled out of financing the remainder of the Chronicles of Narnia film series. Already in pre-production at the time, 20th Century Fox and Walden Media eventually co-produced The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which was released in December 2010 going on to gross over $415 million worldwide.
Read more about this topic: Narnia, Adaptations of The Chronicles of Narnia
Famous quotes containing the word film:
“You should look straight at a film; that’s the only way to see one. Film is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.”
—Werner Herzog (b. 1942)
“A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
“The woman’s world ... is shown as a series of limited spaces, with the woman struggling to get free of them. The struggle is what the film is about; what is struggled against is the limited space itself. Consequently, to make its point, the film has to deny itself and suggest it was the struggle that was wrong, not the space.”
—Jeanine Basinger (b. 1936)