Third “Narnia” Film in Trouble?
The release of “Prince Caspian” to DVD and Blu-Ray tomorrow has set off a flurry of speculation on whether or not there will be a third installment in the “Chronicles of Narnia” franchise.
Last summer, we reported that Disney was considering cutting short the proposed big-screen adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ popular novels at three movies instead of the originally announced seven.  Disney was waiting to see how “Caspian” fared at the box-office before making a final decision.
While “Caspian” was a modest success at the box-office, it may not have been enough to give the green light for the full Narnia series. And now it looks like it the modest box-office could put the third installment of the series in jeopordy.Â
While pre-production on the third installment is moving forward, Disney has not given an official green light to “Voyage of the Dawn Trader.”  According to reports, Disney and Walden Media, who shared production costs on the the first two Narnia movies believe that “Trader” will take in less at the box office than “Caspian” did, leading to a potential scaling back of the production.  The film was originally scheduled to have extensive location shooting done in Malta, Iceland and Prague. Those plans have been nixed and the movie will shoot on the soundstages in Mexico the housed the production of “Titantic.”
It also appears that Disney and Walden are at odds on how much each side will finance of “Trader.” Reports by Jim Hill Media say Walden Media wants Disney to fund half of a $140 million production. But given that Disney is contractually obligated to cover the costs of all prints and advertising on the Narnia movies, Disney is supposedly pushing for a $100 million version instead. It’s also likely that a release date will be pushed back to 2011.
“Trader” was scheduled to begin production in late January. No word yet on if or how these current considerations may affect that start date.
It’s “Treader” not “Trader.”
Um, it’s “Voyage of the Dawn TREADER” as in “to walk upon” not “Trader” as in “day trader.” Maybe the word Dawn in front of it threw you off.
Wait, you mean it’s not “Voyage of the Dog Trainer”? Man, I always wondered why there were no dogs in the book…
But seriously, aside from The Horse and his Boy and The Magician’s Nephew, I really want to see the rest of the books made into films like this. I guess they’ll have to sell a billion DVD’s of Caspian before that happens.
Come on, Man - Trader? I mean, I know SOSF has a longstanding tradition of mangling pronunciation, but really, if you are recycling other reports you could at least copy the title of the movie properly.
And while you are at it, how about some proper attribution of your references rather than ‘reports’? There is at least one of these without any sort of reference - a proper set of links is better, so we could get the original blurb rather than your Cliffs Notes version…
I am a massive fan of all the Narnia books and was looking forward to seeing all seven made into films not three not two but all or not at all. I think that it would have been fun to see “The Horse and His Boy” on the big screen especially the daftness of Bree’s character and the “Magician’s Nephew”, Uncle Andrew was such a funny and eccentric character. CS Lewis created a really magical world and it has been ruined by greedy people and should never have been made into films in the first place. Leave decent fantasy and other books alone, look at “Eragon”, brilliant books but the film wasn’t half as breath-taking at all. And as for “Harry Potter” well……….The books were great but the films cut out a lot of essential parts to the central story and in sense “lost plot”.
This is what happens when greedy gots take over the creative world, they see no light just the dollar or pound signs at the end of it. Greed kills the entertainment world and the films should be made by true artists not fat cats with nothing better to do with their time than kill off other people’s ideas!