gee, good morning to you, too...

[acroyear]

Disney jumps ship on next "Narnia" - Yahoo! News:

"The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" will have to sail without Disney.

The studio said Tuesday that for budgetary and logistical reasons it will not exercise its option to co-produce and co-finance the next "Narnia" movie with producer Walden Media.

The third entry in the series, based on the classic books by C.S. Lewis, was in preproduction and set for a spring shoot for a planned May 2010 release. The development puts the participation of the talent attached in doubt.

Comments

[dawntreader]

yeah, like Disney has no experience with SAILING movies and multiple settings on island locales. i mean, look how much money those Pirates of the Carribbean movies didn't make!

this stinks actually. it means the next movie will look and feel nothing like the first two.

[3fingeredsalute.livejournal.com]

In my opinion, the "Batman" series got better when the same directors didn't direct them. I imagine that equation won't work every time, but we can dream?

Now... don't mess with the directorial talents of the spoof industry which will mock it almost before "Narnia: Part Doh!" hits the theaters. THERE we must have CONSISTENCY! *cough*grin*

[faeriquene.livejournal.com]

Ah, but I think they *are* planning another Pirate movie to come out in 2010ish...so they'll be a little busy with their boats and islands.

[cozit.livejournal.com]

Interesting... as they're still advertising it as an upcoming movie in the traveling museum exhibit. (it's up at the Franklin Institute right now - and not too bad an exhibit behind the advertising, either... a number of costumes with the exhibit as well :-)

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

contracts are funny that way. joint ventures with escape clauses like this have subclauses that say if one side pulls out, they will continue to support the promotions set by the other for a certain amount of time in order to avoid allowing that company to post negative publicity.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

Actually, the success of Pirates is the MAIN reason Disney isn't as gung-ho about Narnia as before. They bought the rights to Narnia to get in on the Fantasy craze while Lord of the Rings was the big one (Narnia was acquired right after Fellowship came out). They did this because they (and I'm dead serious here) did not expect PotC to be a hit. All recent Pirates-themed movies were huge flops, and most of the movies based on rides were also poorly done flops, so PotC had 2 strikes going into it from the the start.

Once Pirates was a hit, Narnia was a nice bonus, but not the driving factor since Narnia had to share any merchandise revenue with the Lewis estate and any earlier stakeholders. PotC is ALL DISNEY, so the profit margins are FAR larger.

With Caspian a hit, but not a HUGE hit, the profits simply weren't enough to bother. You have to remember that the mega-blockbusters are needed by the studio to make massive profits because they have to 1) make up for the flops, and 2) allow for the award-winning "art" films, those oscar contenders that take years to recoup. Or at least that's there excuse. Simply being profitable is never enough for studios, because it's never enough for Wall Street.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

see my note below.

[cozit.livejournal.com]

Oh, that I know... The part that is semi-amusing about it is that the advertising for The Dawn Treader is only one screen - near the end - and it's the only thing being shown on that loop, IIRC. *Very* easy to remove, which is why I'm somewhat surprised that they haven't asked for it to be pulled (after all, other bits have been removed for restoration or whatever, so...).