Narnia & Disney

At a comic convention this past weekend (where some plot details for the next Pixar film, Wall-E, were also released), Disney made the announcement that after this winter's Prince Caspian, followed 18 months later by Dawn Treader in May of '09, Disney will complete the Narnia series one a year every May with Last Battle being released in 2013.

I figure they can do this because they generally outsource the effects, and aside from Eustace going from Dawn Treader to Silver Chair, there's very little cast overlap (since there's very little character overlap) so if one film's production runs over, it won't affect production plans for subsequent films.  Now, if post-production runs over...

No future director announcements have been made.  It may even be possible that they'll do this by not having the same director for every film.

how to clean up a mess?

2719 HYPERION: In the Bag - July 27, 1956:

First you stick a rag, put in the bag, bump bump
Then you bend your back, put it in the sack, bump bump
That's the way it's done, it's a lot of fun, bump bump
Cuttin' capers puttin' papers in the bag

From one of the best of the later Disney cartoons ever!

some people just don't know statistics, or reality...

There are some saying "Simpson's sold to more than just the Simpson's audience" because if you were to take the typical sunday viewing figures (8.9 million) and multiply it by the average ticket price of $6.5 and you get about $58 million.  Yet Simpsons took in $74?  So obviously they brought in more than just the Simpsons fans, right?

wrong.

they brought in all the people who also watch the show in syndication and/or own the dvds (and will wait for them) or just can't watch it on sundays 'cause it doesn't fit their schedule.  in short, it brought a lot of non-consistent fans out, casual fans who like the show but aren't addicted to it enough (after 18 years, we can get a little saturated), casual fans who know that a 90 minute Simpsons movie will simply be a good time worth going to.

plus there's the fact that there wasn't any significant new release competition for it, which also helped older films get higher than expected earnings for their particular age.