Narnia Chronicles to be filmed in New Zealand

to begin filming in mid 2004, pre production work already underway in Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop, and Jackson will be at the helm...

More:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031219/ap_on_en_mo/film_chronicles_of_narnia_1

One of my favorite books.

My school's library SHAFTED me otherwise!

I had thought so myself, but the article says that it was the second. Still I LOVED the Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

Read the blue-bound edition while I was fooling around in my elementary school's library. I'm thinking of reading through them again, and some of Lewis' other work like the Pickwick Papers, etc.

is set before The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and I think CS Lewis wanted that to be read before the others. It fits better there, anyway.

is definitely the first book. It tells the story of two English schoolchildren who enter the Narnia universe for its creation. Later come the four children who go through the wardrobe, in the second book, the Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. There are seven books in total, the last one describing, well, Judgement Day in Narnia, basically. Best book in series: Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Um, can you tell I'm a fan? I have mixed feelings about the movies.

ETA: WTF? They're making five films from seven books? I think I know what they're skipping (A Horse and His Boy and probably The Silver Chair), but still.

It breaks the linear flow of the stories, and Silver Chair is pretty important story-wise (not that Magician's Nephew isn't, but hey, I wish they'd make all seven stories into movies).

And yes, it's pretty safe to guess A Horse and His Boy won't make it into theaters anyway.

But hey, these are bound to be better than those awful BBC specials!! Ugh! :puke:

Lion, Witch & Wardropbe was the first book written in the series, but most contemporary publishers now print and number the books in Narnia's 'chronological' order rather than the order they were written and originally published in.

From the article you linked to:

New Zealander Andrew Adamson, best known for the Oscar-winning animated feature "Shrek," will direct the film and Walden Media will produce it.

I misread

Merely hired the New Zealand-based company to do The Lord of the Rings, as that's where most of it was shot.

...Jackson with return to Tolkien with The Hobbit. (He has said he'd like to do it if the financing is available, and do you really think it won't be?)

He said he'd rather pay 12 bucks and watch someone else's version.

Oh well, we'll see soon enough.

Christopher Tolkien (J.R.R.'s son) doesn't want to give over the rights, and his general dislike of the idea of movie adaptions has led to a rift between Christopher and his own son, who endorsed the movies and was promptly disowned. Yikes.

Well, after seeing the final Lord of the Rings installment, I'm hopeful that New Zealand will provide some wonderful scenic backgrounds for a series of books which hold a very dear place in my heart.

It seemed to me that Jackson was able to capture the heart and the soul of Tolkien's books (if not the precise details) and I will now hold him to that for his Narnia project.

Aslan(!), the White Witch, Reepicheep and Puddleglum would be a joy to see on the big screen if given the same amount of attention that WETA gave to Middle Earth.

And maybe a movie version would open up an additional generation to this wonderful series of books!




On edit: Just saw this from the press release. Don't know if it bodes ill or not as I thought Shrek was simply typical fluff from the Hollywood movie-mills...


"New Zealander Andrew Adamson, best known for the Oscar-winning animated feature "Shrek," will direct the film and Walden"