Posted on 02/21/2005 12:43:07 AM PST by nickcarraway
AS the residents of Narnia like to whisper, "Aslan is on the move." And so he is. But for the moment, Walt Disney Pictures has him on a very short leash.
Aslan, a talking lion with mystical powers, is the central figure in "The Chronicles of Narnia," the much-beloved seven-volume series of fantasy novels written by the British academic C. S. Lewis in the 1950's. By the year's end, if Disney marketers have their way, he will have joined Mickey Mouse, Pinocchio and Buzz Lightyear in a long line of characters that have periodically provided the Burbank giant with entertainment's most valuable asset, a new fantasy to trade on.
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This next wave begins with the expected release on Dec. 9 of "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," which combines live action and computer-generated images in a movie adaptation of Lewis's epic. Sequels may follow. But films are only the spearhead of a corporate initiative that is likely to include a theme park presence, toys, clothing, video games and whatever other tchotchkes the infinitely resourceful Disney team can devise. Having been criticized for failing to cash in on the merchandising opportunities offered by 2003's "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," Disney is preparing for the kind of all-encompassing drive it hasn't mounted since 1994, when it turned "The Lion King" into a pop cultural event that still reverberates in its retail stores and on Broadway.
Company representatives, however, have little to say publicly about the "Narnia" cycle, which is being produced in partnership with the financier Philip Anschutz's Walden Media. They cite a natural reticence about promoting work that is still in progress: the director Andrew Adamson, an animation specialist whose only previous films are the computer-generated comic fairy tales "Shrek" and "Shrek 2," is still behind his digital console.
But this time, the pros at Disney are wrestling with a special challenge: how to sell a screen hero who was conceived as a forthright symbol of Jesus Christ, a redeemer who is tortured and killed in place of a young human sinner and who returns in a glorious resurrection that transforms the snowy landscape of Narnia into a verdant paradise.
That spirituality sets Aslan apart from most of the Disney pantheon and presents the company with a significant dilemma: whether to acknowledge the Christian symbolism and risk alienating a large part of the potential audience, or to play it down and possibly offend the many Christians who count among the books' fan base.
Disney executives say their aim is to capture the largest possible audience by remaining true to Lewis's work. "We're lucky that there are millions of devoted fans, who probably cross four generations," said Dennis Rice, the studio's senior vice president of publicity. "We want to reach all of those devoted fans."
To do that, Mr. Rice said, the studio plans to reach out to middle schools, boys' clubs, girls' clubs, fantasy fans and, where appropriate, religious groups. Mr. Rice said the company's message would be: "We are trying to make this movie to be as faithful to the book as possible. And if you connect to the book, we think you will connect to the movie."
Peter Sealey, an adjunct professor of marketing at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former marketing executive for Coca-Cola and Columbia Pictures, nonetheless described the project's combination of religion and children's entertainment as "an absolute time bomb in these days of extreme sensitivity."
Mr. Sealey's advice to Disney: "Either don't do it, or come completely clean, like a 'Ten Commandments' or a 'Passion of the Christ.' It seems duplicitous just to repress the religious aspects, and certainly they will all come out in this age of the Internet and strident voices on both the left and the right."
By contrast, Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center of the University of Southern California and a 12-year veteran of the Disney Company, finds plenty of precedent for mingling spiritual ideas and popular entertainment.
"P. L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins books, was actually a follower of the mystic G. I. Gurdjieff," Mr. Kaplan said. "Her books were imbued by mysticism, the idea that all is one and one is all. But the film became a family drama in which domestic issues, the role of the children and the prospect of the working world were the themes, rather than the great chain of being or the universality of humanity."
Of Lewis's work, Mr. Kaplan said: "There's enough story and traditional emotion in the 'Narnia' books that they can let the Christian mysticism in it either be a subtext or not a part of it at all. I suspect you can portray resurrection in the same way that E. T. comes back to life, and that practically every fairy tale has a hero or heroine who seems to be gone forever but nevertheless manages to come back."
Still, Disney is already putting out feelers to the religious audience. It has hired Motive Marketing, a California public relations firm that specializes in cultivating Christian audiences, to design and direct a faith-based marketing and publicity campaign. The company, founded by Paul Lauer, performed similar duties for Newmarket Films on "The Passion of the Christ" and for Warner Brothers on "The Polar Express." Motive Marketing recently held a reception for some 30 members of the faith-based press and educational organizations at Disney's Burbank headquarters, where they were addressed by Mr. Adamson and Oren Aviv, the president of Disney's Buena Vista Pictures Marketing unit. According to a report in the Feb. 12 issue of the Christian newsweekly World, Mr. Aviv assured the gathering that "our goal is to make sure that we make and market the movie so that it has the same significance that the book has had."
If Disney manages to create a "Star Wars"-like, generalized hero myth of Lewis's work without alienating its Christian fans, the potential rewards are huge. "The Chronicles of Narnia" represents one of the last children's classics unexplored by cinema (though two British television series and an animated film for American television have been based on the material since 1967), and the books contain enough sweep, action and imagination to compete with "The Lord of the Rings," which was written by Lewis's Oxford friend, J. R. R. Tolkien.
Disney hopes at once to add another large cast of child-friendly characters to its corporate stable, which already includes the British imports Winnie the Pooh and Mary Poppins, while capturing the older audience that took New Line Cinema's recent "Lord of the Rings" trilogy to a worldwide gross approaching $3 billion. As a franchise, the possibilities of "Narnia" seem almost unlimited. It's "Harry Potter" with intellectual respectability and deep cultural roots.
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But how Disney plans to wrestle the Lewis books into line remains a closely held secret. There appear to be few screenplays floating through the underground of Hollywood assistants, where even the most highly protected projects can usually be found, and Disney declined to make any of the film's creative personnel available for interview. Photographs from the New Zealand set, where principal photography finished last month, haven't yet been distributed to the media.
Instead, Disney is practicing a shrewd public relations technique: the slow, carefully controlled release of information. Web sites that serve the desired fan base have been given rationed tidbits: representatives from sites devoted to fantasy films and gaming were invited to visit the New Zealand locations in October; four shots of conceptual art were leaked to darkhorizons.com at the end of November; and the ultimate fanboy site, aint-it-cool-news.com, became the beneficiary of a short film in which Richard Taylor, who's overseeing "Narnia's" special effects, shows off some of the creature models and costumes that have been developed.
From these fragmentary sources, it's possible to glean a few facts. Though the project is being directed by Mr. Adamson, a computer animation expert, for instance, the "Narnia" adventures will be filmed largely with human actors (including Tilda Swinton, a critics' favorite, as Lewis's temptress figure, the White Witch, and the professionally affable Jim Broadbent as the children's eccentric guardian). Some characters, like the faun Mr. Tumnus, will be played by human actors (James McAvoy, in Tumnus's case), equipped with computer-animated limbs. Aslan, who will speak in the trained theatrical voice of Brian Cox, will be a wholly computer-generated creation, as will Mr. and Mrs. Beaver (with the voices of Ray Winstone and Dawn French).
And judging from the concept art, Mr. Adamson will be creating a world far, far from the sunny storybook kingdom of the "Shrek" films. The London Blitz, which drives the four children of the Pevensie family to seek refuge in the country, will be portrayed in explosively realistic terms. A painting of a battle scene grimly suggests the violent combat of the "Lord of the Rings" series, with supernatural and human figures brought together in a teeming, epic landscape. And in his short film, the effects supervisor Mr. Taylor shows off a number of realistic, or perhaps just plain real, weapons, including a sword that figures prominently in the film's title treatment and looks as if it could do some serious damage. (Mr. Taylor is affiliated with Weta Workshop, the New Zealand special-effects house that also created the props and costumes for "The Lord of the Rings.")
Based on the available material, Disney seems to be going for a strict "sword and sorcery" look, as the genre is known to its fans: dark, muddy, full of clanking metal and grunting extras. Though the climactic battle scene occupies only a page and a half of Lewis's original text for "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," it seems certain to figure much more strongly in the film. This looks like Disney's way of appeasing the teenage sword and sorcery fans, who have a large, well-organized presence on the Internet and whose early support of the project is crucial.
The next wave of leaks will probably offer glimpses of the film's more childlike, whimsical side, Disney's traditional strengths. Expect concept art of the fauns, the beavers and the other more cuddly creatures to start emerging in the next few months as a way of inviting younger children and their parents into the film. Disney will almost certainly have to increase the cute quotient of these creations, who are barely characterized in Lewis's narration. This is where Disney's pre-eminent stable of animators will go to work, forging fuzzy creatures that will project vivid, embraceable characters in the film, and lend themselves to easy modeling for the toy manufacturers.
But will that merchandise be palatable if it comes with religious connotations? As a publicly held company that must appeal to the widest possible market, Disney does not want to take a side in the culture wars, as it demonstrated when it declined to distribute Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." Indeed, Disney's privileged position in American culture is due in large part to the apolitical image of innocence and cheerful naïveté that the company has cultivated since Uncle Walt was in charge. To seem to endorse one religious or political opinion over another, as Mr. Sealey of Berkeley said, would be to risk returning the Disney brand to the routine contentiousness of the everyday adult world.
HarperCollins, the American publisher of the "Narnia" books, stepped into just such a controversy in 2001 when a memorandum from an executive with the its HarperSanFrancisco imprint surfaced with the assertion that "we'll need to be able to give emphatic assurances that no attempt will be made to correlate the stories to Christian imagery/theology." As reported by Doreen Carvajal in The New York Times on June 3, 2001, the memorandum was part of HarperCollins's successful effort to squelch a documentary and teaching aid about Lewis being developed for the publisher's Christian division, Zondervan Publishing House. A HarperCollins spokeswoman, Lisa Herling, responded then, "The goal of HarperCollins is to publish the work of C. S. Lewis to the broadest possible audience and leave any interpretation of the works to the reader."
Indeed, in HarperCollins's recently published adult edition of the novels, with all seven united in a single volume of biblical (or at least "Harry Potter") proportions, there are no references to Lewis's deep and celebrated religious beliefs. The only supplementary material is a brief essay by Lewis on the art of writing for children.
But at the same time, "Mere Christianity," a compilation of Lewis's wartime radio talks on his Christian faith, remains a successful title for HarperSanFrancisco, catching up with the "Narnia" books on Amazon.com. And there are a number of Christian-oriented guides to the "Narnia" series in print, including "A Family Guide to Narnia: Biblical Truths in C. S. Lewis' 'The Chronicles of Narnia' " by Christin Ditchfield, a syndicated Christian radio host.
If Disney is tempted to tap the growing power of the Christian market, it will almost certainly receive a warm welcome. "The 'Narnia' books are very well loved in evangelical households," said Mark Moring, the managing editor of christianitytodaymovies.com, an online film guide offshoot of the evangelical magazine Christianity Today. "Just about everyone I know at work and at church read these books as children, and now they're reading them to their children. They are definitely on the A-list."
Mr. Moring finds the prospect of a "Narnia" stripped of its Christian dimension "a dumb thing to do. It would be self-defeating."
But the company will probably proceed gingerly. Look for, at most, study guides to be prepared for Sunday school classes, local discussion groups to be organized and blocks of tickets to be offered to churches at a discount (a technique that figured heavily in the box-office triumph of "The Passion of the Christ"). Those who want to see Aslan as a Jesus figure or the White Witch as his satanic opponent will find little to encourage or discourage their interpretation, even though that interpretation was its author's own.
"They're seeing it from 10,000 feet, from which the religious themes are no longer specific to Christianity, but part of the great Joseph Campbell tradition of universal myth," Mr. Kaplan, of the Lear Center, said of "Narnia's" new caretakers. "When you get to that level, it's broadly acceptable to the public."
Hollywood should relax. Disney will find a way to screw this up.
They would be stupid to not advertise this movie, I've seen ad campaigns almost designed to cause a flop... if they did this movie right it would one of those films that never dies.
IF and only IF they do this right.
I agree
And the Disney people don't even realize how stupid they look. Walt Disney understood, but his time has passed and his dream is no more.
Good advice.
I went to the website and it seems they will focus most heavily on the fantasy and "mythological" elements rather than any spirituality. The brief bio on Lewis doesn't even mention his huge influence in the realm of Christian apologetics.
Ping for lots of detail about the Chronicles of Narnia film and the controversy it's destined to create.
"To do that, Mr. Rice said, the studio plans to reach out to middle schools, boys' clubs, girls' clubs, fantasy fans and, where appropriate, religious groups. Mr. Rice said the company's message would be: "We are trying to make this movie to be as faithful to the book as possible. And if you connect to the book, we think you will connect to the movie."
Did anyone see Fox's John Gibson's piece on Hollywood and America last night? It was great and did a good job of portraying the hedonistic Hollywood hatred of Christianity and traditional values. One of the facts brought out was concerning the rewriting of great movies to eliminate conservative values or to promote the Hollywood political world-view. Also, they censor and rewrite books to do the same. Why change anything about the Narnia books? Float out there the accurate work of C. S. Lewis which has been so popular in book form and let's see what happens. I would say it will be great for the producer not willing to distort and change in order to serve his own values. One of the problems for producers of the more conservative movies is that the Hollywood crowd punishes anyone who produces anything outside the prevailing hedonistic value system. They socially banish them from the community and they do everything they can to isolate and punish them. What horrible, horrible people. I have very liberal friends whom I love dearly and though we disagree mightily on many political, moral and religious issues, I would never reach out to try and take away their livelihood or the peace and hospitality they enjoy in the neighborhood. Gibson did a great job on that piece last night. America needs to know about this calloused, cruel and out of touch community.
Since this is Disney, Aslan will be portrayed as a gay, Eskimo, transvestite lion.
I hear you guys. We're probably right, but let's hope for the best.
In my senior year of High School, I had the honour and the challenge of taking up the role of Aslan the lion, our mainstage winter production. The drama director was a dedicated Christian man - an elder of the church I attended - and he wanted me for the role before the school year ever started, I later discovered.
The message of Lewis' splendid tale was played to the hilt - Christianity unobscured - a soundtrack for the production provided by the Evangelical Christian pop vocal group "2nd Chapter of Acts" in their 'concept album' "The Roar of Love".
During the scene when I (as Aslan the Lion) was put to death by the witch on the great stone table, a plywood crafted "stone table" was rigged with fast release 'pop-hinges', and zig-zag cut across the middle. A slot was carved in the table to accommodate the blade of a medium-length sword (rather than just the modest knife specified in the book) which would fit into the hollow of my underarm thus appearing to have been thrust into my chest.
Here is why: Once the sword was plunged "into" Aslan's torso, all the stage lights went totally dark, and an opaque scrim curtain dropped in front of the platform the "stone table" rested upon.
Next, a baby spotlight was flipped on from behind the platform, and trained upon the hilt of the sword; the light began as a pale greenish colour, but a red gel was then fade-switched in.
The resulting image cast the shadow of the Cross (the sword hilt) surrounded in blood-red light onto the scrim curtain for all in the audience to plainly see.
A circle of red light fully 25 to 30 inches in diameter surrounded the "Cross" - visible all the way to the back rows of a 800+ seat auditorium. In every performance, this was followed by an audible gasp from the audience.
In high school theatre, it is usually axiomatic that a passable musical production (Guys and Dolls, Westside Story, South Pacific, Oliver) is the surest ticket, the best possible moneymaker for the drama department.
This play obliterated that concept outright. We sold out every scheduled performance in advance, and were compelled to work in a half-dozen more matinees, and three extra evening showings. All of them sold out as well, and we still had people turned away at the door.
People were calling the school (in Oregon) from out of state (Washington, Idaho, N. Calif.) wanting tickets, they were calling and asking about the show for more than a month after the final (extra) performance.
The seating capacity of the auditorium was supposed to be 850, but there were dozens of wheelchairs (when Senior centers came) and scores of extra folding chairs for the matinees for metro-area grade school kids. There were usually at least an additional 50 to 100 folk standing in the aisles as well, and the drama director and school principle more than once remarked - only half jokingly - that they sincerely hoped the local fire marshal did not make an appearance, or there would be trouble.
Were we such fantastically gifted actors? I would like to think so - but looking back, maybe not. Was the set design above and beyond the norm for a suburban high school in the early eighties? Not exactly. Was our auditorium so richly appointed. Ha!
What drew the hordes of people was word of mouth about a strong and uncompromising spiritual message of unadulterated Christian HOPE. Played completely straight and true (as much as we were capable) and close to what we prayerfully believed C.S. Lewis' - and God's - intentional design was.
There was - and still very much is - an enormous spiritual emptiness in people's lives. The hunger which springs out of that cannot be satisfied by less than the "Real Thing".
If Disney chooses to take a firm hold of Lewis' great work, and give it a faithful, unblinking rendering, then they will have their studio's runaway box office hit of all time. This could sell more tickets than any previous film which had the Disney name attached.
I no longer recall how much money our "little" play made. It easily broke all school records previous in terms of dollars and number of tickets. Probably over twelve thousand people saw that play. But that's not what stays with me; what stays in my mind to this day are the ennumerable comments and compliments from people who met with the cast members afterward, the many folk who were crying and asking some of us to pray with them (we invited pastors and elders from several local churches to join and help us after the play, once we experienced that from the first two performances) and the kind people who told us that seeing the show had changed them somehow (gosh, I wonder how?)
It really stuck with me that even two years after high school, I still ran into the occasional person who, when they learned I had been in the drama department at that H.S. - would ask if I had any involvement with the "Lion Witch and Wardrobe" production...and when I told them what my part had been, their reactions were positively surprising.
It stuck with me because it stuck with them. There is no question in my mind that God imbued those stories in the "Chronicles" with the power to reach out and grab people, make them confront their emptiness, or sadness, or spiritual desolation, and ask life-changing questions about it all.
Disney could create so much more than they perhaps realise. What the film(s) could do for the spiritual quality of some people's lives would be immeasurable - and it might just incidentally restore a bit of the lost luster to Disney's flagging reputation. Will somebody PLEASE tell them that?
Thanks. Agreed.
While I trust Adamson, the richer the source material Disney have to work with the more likely they are to debase it and render it a lifeless shadow of the original work.
The best example is the magnificent writing in the original A A Milne books compared with Disney's banal reworkings and merchandising efforts. I mean for goodness sake - Pooh at Thanksgiving? Pooh's first day at school? The Tigger Movie? Milne is spinning in his grave with each degradation of his vision...I just hope they don't try anything remotely similar on Lewis.
Shouldn't that read "Christians Nervous About Hollywood's Narnia"?
REally.
Everyone with half a brain (or less) knows that C.S. Lewis was a devout Christian (in the later part of his life, after years of being an atheist). Everyone knows that the Narnia story was written as an allegory for Jesus Christ.
It would be beyond sickening and nauseating to take a great series like this and butcher it, lopping off any Christian significance to it. But like you said, Disney will find a way! Especially with exectutives who are not, as we say, believers in Jesus or Christianity. THEY would be the ones who would obviously be trying to hide, obscure or delete what is integral to the entire work.
If you want a good read, try "Surpised by Joy". It is Lewis' autobiography of his early life. I recently re-read it.
Disney had the rights to Lord of the rings and had every intention of wrecking it. One of their comments to pete jackson was that there were "too many hobbits" so they were going to have to kill off a hobbit or two. I would no more trust them with narnia than I would trust American Atheists or the National council of churches with this material. Diz has lost the touch it showed with lion king, little mermaid, beauty, aladdin (not to mention their classics from Snow White and Dumbo through, say, dalmations).
From - http://www.narnia.com/chronicles/index.htm
"C.S. Lewis once wrote that the idea for the Narnia books came to him from images: "a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen in a sledge, a magnificent lion." From these mental pictures he created the Land of Narnia, a land populated with a rich diversity of beings, some very like their counterparts in our world, some derived from his knowledge and love of myth and fairy tale, and some, like Puddleglum, purely his own invention. Here you can meet them all!"
Mommy, what is a Christian?
Well son, according to disney, Christian's are people who have "crazy unstructured images come to them derived from their knowledge and love of myth and fairy tale."
nice.
I grew up on the books of Grimm fairy tales, and remember watching the Disney versions during my elementary school years thinking "that's not how the story goes". I have no confidence whatsoever that Narnia won't disappear into a cauldron of Disney kitsch.
The only thing I remember from this book is Turkish Delight.
Yes! It was excellent. I also thought FOX's timing with it was perfect, on the eve of the Oscars. I especially liked their historic synopsis: how Hollywood was once a beacon of Americana and a nice form of escape for Americans beleaguered by Depression and War. Pretty stunning how quickly the whole industry went from patriotic producers entertaining audiences, to strident socialists pumping out angry agitprop.
the rewriting of great movies to eliminate conservative values...they censor and rewrite books to do the same
Yep. "Sum Of All Fears" was a perfect example. Jack Valenti's weaselly denials of such behavior were totally unconvincing! (In fact, I believe Valenti is a big part of the problem.) Anyhow...for that reason, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Disney screws up C.S. Lewis's books profusely.
One of the problems for producers of the more conservative movies is that the Hollywood crowd punishes anyone who produces anything outside the prevailing hedonistic value system.
That struck me too. I kept thinking it's like the mafia out there, or some kind of gang organization—where any dissidence costs you dearly!
bttt
Even if they wanted to, it would be very difficult for Disney to take the Christian allegory out of this story -- the best and most dramatic parts of the plot, that would make the best movie scenes, are the ones with unmistakable (for those with ears to hear) Christian subtexts.
It would be possible for them to damage "The Magician's Nephew" (by putting pantheism into the Creation scene) or "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" (by changing the final Aslan-as-lamb scene), but only an extremely perverse director, who both understands the Christian subtext in a very refined way AND hates it, could ruin "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe". An ordinary blue-state secularist director, who just sees it as a good story, won't be able to avoid transmitting the messages he himself doesn't get, because Lewis was a genius.
Wow! That read like a wonderful, dramatic, and reverent production!
I love the Narnia Books and knew from an early age of the Christian aspect and symbolism of the saga. My homeschooling group had a weekly reading and study group of the entire series. Our children loved it.
There was one Christian woman from the homeschooling group, however, who was always lecturing people about the evils and false doctrine that Lewis and his Narnia series profess. She would come to the early readings screaming at us that we were worse than the evil Harry Potterphiles. Of course, this woman does not allow any fantasy, fairy tales or mythology reading for her children. Just the Bible and a few carefully scrutinized classics. Her main argument was that the books contained a witch and talking animals that most certainly were Satanic. We finally asked her to leave and find another group that was more to her liking in their walk. Thankfully, she left.
Thank you for the recommendation.
Lewis himself believed that fantasy was a way to give divine truth to those who were armored and guarded against "church" and "religion" because of bad experiences in childhood or just misunderstanding. He referred to it as smuggling Christian thought "past watchful dragons."
The whole point of the Narnia books is that the Christian symbolism is buried. I know plenty of people (including a childhood friend who was Jewish) who read them many times and never "got it" - or didn't get it until the end of the The Last Battle . . "and then He no longer looked to them like a lion . . . "
To "get rid of" the Christian symbolism they would have to change the entire book from beginning to end.
This is the wisest advice anybody could give Disney. If even the slightest hint of taking the Christian meaning out of Narnia is let out to the Christian community ( a community that already does not trust Disney) it will turn into a disaster. The Christians won't come out in force and do much to openly denounce the reversion of the story done in the film, and neither will the non-Christian fans once they understand that the story line has been messed with and Disney has not been true to Lewis.
If they are true to the books, the Christians will come and promote it with true excitement, and that excitement will continue down the line to the rest of the fans of Narnia.
This is one of those times when there is no option but to follow the original story without the slightest hint of change. This is a do or die moment for Disney....a chance to repair some of the damage they have done with families or to make that damage permanent in the eyes of Christian America.
Hollywood and Madison Avenue, together, were successful in doing this to Christmas.
Taking the money - losing the religion.
Good post and good points!
LOL!
She obviously had never read Lewis' "Space Trilogy", Mere Christianity, Surprised by Joy, God In the Dock, The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, etc...or she would never have been so bold as to make such ignorant statements. Takes all kinds, I guess.
A.A.C.
Well, Christians oft times differ in their walks with God, I guess. She was very strict and legalistic. No celebrating Christmas, birthdays, etc. Her kids turned out pretty wild...at least her daughters did. Kinda sad.
Why generalize like that? That Fox special was pandering scaremongering at its worst. The reason there aren't more conservative movies is that not enough conservatives go in to the film business. More conservatives should go to film school. Guys like Eastwood, John Milius have had long careers. Robert Duvall is a conservative. Steven Spielberg still talks fondly about his friendship with John Wayne at the end of the latter's life. That show overstated things to a large degree.
HAHAHAHAHAHA! What a funny yet gross story.
Why thank you! BTW, nice guns.
Have you ever had "Turkish Delight"?
I have.
It's nasty.
How Edmund managed to get hooked on the stuff eludes me.
ROFL!!!
Besides, lots of movies have some sort of Christ-like character or Christian symbolism in them. Two I can think of right off the bat are Cool Hand Luke and at least one adaptation of Brave New World.
I suppose they have Bp. Spong advising the writers. sarcasm off
I guess that they haven't looked at the income from last year's Mel Gibson movie he produced and initially had difficulty getting anyone to distribute. Be faithful to the book and CS Lewis' intent and you'll have no trouble filling theaters.
Disney screwed up Tarzan. ERB had over 30 Tarzan books going all over the world and into the hollow interior. They could have milked those books for decades, releasing a new Tarzan animated adventure every year. Instead, they screwed it up beyond belief. Disney can screw up anything.
And Disney WILL screw up Narnia, the same way the movie Starship Troopers screwed up Heinlein's book and for the same reason.
Maybe the "Narnia" cycle, which is being produced in partnership with the financier Philip Anschutz's Walden Media won't give Disney the opportunity to screw it up
If they do it right though, its a movie that could be re-released every couple of years as a classic. It could be like The Passion, or Its a Wonderful Life all over again.
If they do it right, they have six more books to make movies from, and potentially enormous profits from each one.
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