Narnia 3: "Not Dead Yet"

[acroyear]

Third "Narnia" film moves to new studio  - Yahoo! News UK:

"The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" -- the third instalment of the "Chronicles of Narnia" franchise -- will be setting sail from a new port.

The Walden Media project, which was let go by Walt Disney Pictures last month, is landing at Fox 2000, a unit of 20th Century Fox, which will develop it with an eye to release the movie in the holiday season of 2010.

Many of the key players are expected to stay with the project, including director Michael Apted and actor Ben Barnes, though a new writer might come aboard.

Comments

[pharmtoxgirl.livejournal.com]

Ooooohhhhh I hope they are able to keep it going!

[wildwose.livejournal.com]

Wow! I am somewhat embarrassed to say that, I did not know that Disney had dropped it! Why oh Why. It isn't like the first two weren't successful! Do you have any links to the story and why they might have done this?

[wildwose.livejournal.com]

I found it something.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2009/01/the-secret-hist.html

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

There's more to it which I've posted about before.

The real heart of it was that Disney bought Narnia because it wanted a Fantasy franchise from the literary world to cash in on LotR's (HUGE) success, and Harry Potter as well (which is also aiming to be a major part of the Universal Studios park competing with Disney in Florida). They picked up Narnia and started the "soak 'em up" wars that got Eregon, Golden Compass, and quite a few other "book 1's" made, though most of them were second rate films that were just the studios cashing in and it showed.

Now, the trouble in Disney started actually before Narnia was really in production: Pirates of the Caribbean became the biggest thing Disney had done since Beauty and the Beast. Thus, Disney not only already had its fantasy franchise, but it also had EXCLUSIVE merchandise rights to it, where-as for any Narnia Merch (including dvd sales), a portion would go to Walden and another portion would go to the C.S. Lewis estate. It also knows damn well that Pirates and Pirates alone is responsible for Blue-Ray winning the HD wars so early (compared to how long VHS-Beta played out), the first film being the top seller and outselling Shrek (the highest HD-DVD) almost 3 to 1.

So with this huge property already out there, Disney really didn't need Narnia anymore. That the second film, while not flopping, wasn't huge is due to a number of things, one of which is that the there was a surprising unity about the first film reaching the word-of-mouth of a particular audience: the Religious Right, who know darn well the allegory that is the first book (the Gospel of John, and Last Battle is the book of Revelation) and encouraged their followers. This surprising movement I have only seen one other time, which was the large Black movement that saw and supported the first Batman film in 1989.

In both cases (Narnia and Batman) that same word of mouth momentum completely disappeared for the second film, as if it never existed at all.

Thus, Disney had to do what the Street suddenly wasn't doing, and in the middle of summer blockbuster season.

Personally, had they kept it to the Holiday season like the first film, I think it would have been bigger.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

And if they had kept the production schedule constant so the momentum was constant (a-la Harry Potter), the film would have been out sooner and the feelings from the first film not so easily forgotten. It normally takes 3 years for a sequel (once it's OK'ed), but the audience demand for a sequel has really dropped to only 2 years or they won't follow it anymore because there's too many other film franchises out there.

[pharmtoxgirl.livejournal.com]

Dead on about the Holiday Season (as well as everything else)

But I think the Summer *really* killed it.

[dawntreader]

i also think they didn't want to have to compete a sailing adventure movie (Dawn Treader) with their own sailing adventure movies franchise (Pirates).

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

However, if they had stayed in, they could have guided Dawn Treader to a holiday release and kept the summer for Caribbean things. Now they may end up head to head which isn't good for those of us who want to see good movies but may not be able to see 2 or 3 in a 3 week period before they leave the theatres.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

Disney's got bigger fish to fry, in that
1) Pirates isn't gonna hit 'til 2011 (if then), and with Narnia 3 on track for 2010 (the limited budget basically shortens the post-production period), they're not competing.

Pirates will likely be fighting Harry Potter 7 part 1, some Marvel franchise, or a big surprise unknown that nobody has even started dreaming of today (What's Spielberg up to right now? Anyone? Anyone?).

2) Disney already has the summer-winter trend going with Pixar in the summer and Disney's own animated faire in the Winter, and they know the latter needs all the help it can get. Bolt did ok, but again FAR short of expectation as a result of a number of issues that Disney couldn't help, in particularly being caught by surprise (like EVERYBODY was) at the HUGE opening weekend that Twilight got along with so much attention in the media that every other film literally disappeared if it wasn't out there for Oscar contention from adults.

But Disney's own animation department, trying to rebound itself from the Eisner-saturated late 90s, really can't afford another "modest artistic success" like that. Wall Street doesn't react well to projects that do 3 times better on DVD than in the box office, in spite of how well that supports the bottom line.

Princess and the Frog and Rapunzel both have to be absolutely HUGE winter-time hits, or it's all over and Pixar will become THE Disney animation studios...

...then God help us all if Pixar ever makes a flop...

But for the next couple of Christmas seasons, I don't expect Disney to put anything out there in family competition with those animated releases. They really do need to get a smash hit again.

[dawntreader]

i reserve cheering until i see it's official release date to know it's really REALLY real. i don't want to get my hopes up. ;)