Happy Birthday Kelley! (Fan Videos)

Today is Kelley's Birthday! (She's AslansLily on AC) For her birthday I made her two videos. She had requested a Skandar and Georgie fan video to the song "I Wanna Know You." My first attempt ended up being a Edmund and Lucy video to that song. It was so fun to work on! Then I made a Skandar Keynes and Georgie Henley video to the song "Someone Wake Me Up" (by Joe McElderry, the British singer for the Dawn Treader). That was fun too! I borrowed a lot of clips (like the interview ones) from other Skandar/Georgie videos online. The LWW and PC parts are from the bloopers. The later clips are from their visit to see Aslan, the new lion cub at the Smithsonian, random interviews about VDT, and the London Premiere. I don't usually do "relationship" fan videos, but I had fun doing these because they were for a friend. I've posted them both below for you to watch.



Music: I Wanna Be With You - Avalon
Video: Walden Media / Walt Disney Pictures' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Walden Media / Walt Disney Pictures' Prince Caspian, and Walden Media / Fox's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Dedicated to: Skandar Keynes and Georgie Henley



Music: Someone Wake Me Up - Joe McElderry
Video: Walden Media / Walt Disney Pictures' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Walden Media / Walt Disney Pictures' Prince Caspian, and Walden Media / Fox's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Also Promotional Videos for each of the films, and footage from Skandar and Georgie's recent public appearances.
Dedicated to: AslansLily

Magician's Nephew?!?!

I have two stories to share with you today. First, Perry Moore, the Executive Producer of Walden Media and for all three Narnia Films, died suddenly two days ago. Dad told me, and I ran to check it out online. I posted this about him on Aslan's Country:

Perry Moore, the executive producer at Walden Media and of the three Narnia movies died yesterday at age 39. He was found dead in his apartment in New York, probably due to an overdose of OxyContin. You can read more here.

His site, PerryMooreStories.com, says this about his involvement in Narnia:

Perry Moore is a best-selling author, film producer, screenwriter, and director, best known as the executive producer of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

A longtime production executive for Walden Media, Moore was instrumental in bringing The Chronicles of Narnia series to the company. After landing the rights to the C. S. Lewis series, he moved into a production deal with the company. The film represents his first as a motion picture executive producer.

In addition to his work in production and development, The CS Lewis Company appointed Moore to write The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe: The Official Illustrated Movie Companion, a New York Times Bestseller.

I have read the LWW Movie Companion. It is one of my favorite books! I’d encourage you to read it also. Perry Moore did a great job.

He continues his role as executive producer of Prince Caspian, due to be released in 2008, and will continue with the third in the Narnia franchise, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. He is such a rabid fan of the Chronicles of Narnia, he hopes to see all seven books in the series adapted into films.

Perry Moore was instrumental in bringing the Narnia books to film, and he hoped to see all seven made. I pray they will all be made, in honor of him. Thanks, Perry, for all you did to make Narnia come to life.

Now the question is... What will happen to the Narnia series? Surely, as I reported recently, talks of greenlighting Silver Chair were happening. Now will they be put on hold? I always held on to the hope that Walden Media wanted to make the whole series, because they continued even when Disney dropped out. Was Perry the only person at Walden that wanted to do all seven? Maybe this is the end. More likely, they will make another Narnia film dedicated to him. Mark Johnson, the Producer of all three films, was reported as wanting to make Silver Chair next. Liam Neeson said he wanted to see all seven films made.

We just waited for a day... then this showed up in our news feed:

"Magician's Nephew Greenlit?"


Why? Here's what started the whole thing: an article from wtkr.com about Perry Moore's death which talks about his last conversation with his mother.

Moore's death came as he was poised for even greater successes, his family said.

"The night before he died, he had an hour-long conversation with his mom," father Bill Moore said as he waited at the airport for a flight to New York. "He had gotten all the good news he could possibly get."

Perry Moore told his family he'd secured financing for another Narnia movie, "The Magician's Nephew." He was also working with Starz, a cable-movie company, to adapt his novel, "Hero," and he was preparing to meet with actress Julianne Moore on another project.

"He had everything in the world going for him," his father said. "He was very upbeat."

Magician's Nephew????

I'll give you three good reasons why they should make The Silver Chair first. Then three comforting thoughts.

1. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader leads up to The Silver Chair so well! (In my VDT review, I list some of the ways: The green mist, the reference to Jill Pole, etc.) I think the producers were expecting SC would come next.
   
2. If they do Magician's Nephew now, when they do Silver Chair, Will Poulter (our Eustace) will be too old! He's already pushing the age he's supposed to be in SC. And they cannot recast Eustace. Will Poulter is perfect, and he deserves to play Eustace Scrubb in The Silver Chair! Tilda Swinton (our Jadis) was quoted as saying she really wanted to do Magician's Nephew next. (Of course! She's a main character, and she's not in SC. Maybe that would be good though. Get Jadis over with, and do the last three books without her.) But Will is growing up! Tilda Swinton can wait. Will Poulter can't.
3. The story continuity keeps going if SC is next. It has the same characters (Eustace, Caspian, Trumpkin, Liliandil) and starts where VDT left off! It is the logical one, story-wise, to do next.

Comforting thoughts:

1. Magician's Nephew may be more popular than Silver Chair. Would people rather see a sequel to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader or a prequel to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? It's the book that tells how Narnia began. How the Lion created Narnia, how the Witch got to Narnia, and how the Wardrobe got in the Spareoom. It will be a great movie! (like Silver Chair, Horse and His Boy, and the Last Battle...)
   
2. Perry Moore's mother may have messed up. Maybe he really meant Silver Chair? Ok it sounds far-stretched, but wouldn't it be funny if all of this fuss was for nothing? Over a typo?
   
3. They're almost definitely going to continue the series!! We want to see all seven made, and if Magician's Nephew is greenlit, that will be the fourth out of seven. I think if they get one more made, they will make them all. No more worry about the next film being greenlit.

And we wait. I'll let you know when anything is announced officially. :)

Images: Aslan's Country, RJ.

Hopeful, Encouraging, Promising, Wonderful!

This is the first good news we've heard on The Silver Chair in a long time!!

It's not the official announcement or anything.... then I'd be too excited to type straight! Plus I'd be too busy planning a celebration party and telling all my friends and reporting things on Aslan's Country! :)

Anyway....

I have to say I was more than pleased to read the following in a Box Office Report by Thompson on Hollywood:

Dawn Treader quietly sailed past $100 million at the domestic box office on Jan. 23rd—a remarkable feat considering that many pronounced the threequel dead in the water after its $24.3 million bow, an all-time low for the franchise. But that’s not all: Dawn Treader sped past Disney’s Tron: Legacy at the global B.O., $373 million vs. $363 million, and is poised to whip the foreign take of the previous Narnia chapter, Prince Caspian ($278 million).

It might have appeared that Dawn Treader was just another 3-D title (repping 58% of its U.S. total) in a crowded PG season, but moviegoers told their friends otherwise. To date, Dawn Treader has made $102 million at the domestic B.O. – a number that Warner Bros.’ pop toon Yogi Bear ($93 million) has yet to hit. Such good news has spurred talks between Fox and Walden Media about bringing the fourth C.S. Lewis book The Silver Chair to the screen. Clearly, audiences burnt by a weak second Narnia entry were brought back to the cinemas by upbeat word-of-mouth.

YAY!!!! We haven't heard something like this in a while, so it's very encouraging. Because of people telling their friends to go see it (me! me!), it has made $102 million in the USA, and (as of today) has made $372 million worldwide! This is what has got Fox and Walden talking about another movie. Yes! Go get 'em! Keep seeing the movie! Keep buying the DVD and Blu-ray! Rah Rah! Ok, enough cheerleading....

I'd encourage you to read the whole article. Well, the parts about The Dawn Treader, anyway. It tells about Fox and Walden's studying of Prince Caspian to see what they could do better. It also describes their marketing and promotion plans. I talked about their interesting marketing scheme in my post, The Fate of Narnia depends on You. Some of my post:

They marketed the film as a “Return to Magic. Return to Hope. Return to Narnia.” I loved that. I wanted the movie to have more of the fun, magic, wonderment feel the first film had. I had hope that it would be a fabulous movie. We also heard that they were trying hard to keep the spiritual themes of the Dawn Treader book alive in the movie. They claimed to have a "renewed commitment to the message of the books" and admitted that they made some mistakes with Prince Caspian. I thought was very promising, since a lot of us Narnia fans care deeply about the spiritual and Christian symbolisms C.S. Lewis put in the books.

It also is very popular in international theatres (You wouldn’t guess how much international promotion the movie received!). So in the long run it will probably do very well. And we're hoping that a future "Silver Chair" movie is announced soon!

This is echoed in the Box Office story! I've quoted some of it below:

“The second [Narnia] film left a less-than-satisfied flavor in the audiences, and Treader marked a return to the spirit of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” observed Fox senior VP of distribution Chris Aronson, about the masses’ desire to climb aboard. “Dawn Treader provided more heart and a whimsical sense of adventure.”

“We did a lot of research before releasing this film and learned that audiences didn’t like the second film because it lacked the magic, mystery and adventure of the first film,” says Fox International co-president Paul Hanneman, “When it came to marketing Dawn Treader, it was these qualities that we emphasized.”

Rather than capitalize on the Narnia brand in a universal campaign, Fox International tailored a country-by-country secular promotion, unlike the U.S.‘s Christian focus. Fox tapped the Chirstian niche where appropriate, hosting screenings for Evangelical Christians in South Africa and conducted grassroots efforts in Latin America. “Voyage” became the central message in Dawn Treader’s ads; a character action collage à la Lord of the Rings repped the key outdoor/print images in many territories over Aslan the Lion, which was the signature U.S. hook.

Well, just had to share this cool story with you! To read the Aslan's Country post, click here: Fox and Walden "talking about Silver Chair"?