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]

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.