Here's why Chronicles of Narnia 4 still hasn't been made. C.S. Lewis' classic fantasy epic novels (and not-exactly-subtle Christian allegory) finally got the big-budget movie treatment with 2005's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Co-produced by Disney and directed by Andrew Adamson in a relatively dramatic change of pace from his prior directorial efforts on the first two Shrek movies, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe was easily the most successful film in the wave of fantasy novel adaptations that followed the first few Harry Potter movies in the early '00s.
A sequel, Prince Caspian, hit theaters three years later, but saw a significant drop-off in box office from its predecessor ($745 million vs. $419.7 million), possibly in part due to its somewhat darker and less family-friendly tone. However, far from killing the franchise, it was followed by a sequel, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, two years later. In addition to costing a good deal less than Prince Caspian to make (upwards of $85 million less, to be exact), Dawn Treader cubed the series' downward trend at the box office by taking in $415 million, much to the delight of the franchise's new distributor, Fox.
While the initial plan was to adapt The Magician's Nephew (which acts as a prequel to the other Narnia books) after that, things changed when the franchise's co-producer, Walden Media, lost the Narnia film rights in 2011. Two years later, The C.S. Lewis Company struck a new deal with The Mark Gordon Company to adapt The Silver Chair instead, following the order in which the original books were published. Story-wise, The Silver Chair picks up one year (in our world) after the events of Dawn Treader, and follows that novel's co-protagonist, the Pevensies' cousin Eustace Scrubb, as he and his peer Jill Pole travel to Narnia to help a now-old King Caspian locate his missing heir, Prince Rilian.
The Silver Chair movie was slow to move forward from there, but roared back to life in 2016, when Sony came aboard to finance the film (with plans to adapt the remaining Narnia books after that). Since Will Poulter, who played Eustace in Dawn Treader, and the other young actors from the previous Narnia movies had already aged out of their roles by that point, the idea was The Silver Chair would reboot the franchise with a different cast. A year later, Joe Johnston of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Jumanji, and Captain America: The First Avenger fame came aboard as director, and even announced his intention to retire from directing once the movie was finished.
That was the last major update on the film, and it appears to have fallen off the tracks since then. It's possible Sony decided it wasn't worth rebooting a franchise that was already three films deep and had grossed less with each passing entry. Regardless, Netflix officially acquired the rights to all seven Narnia novels in November 2018 and is reportedly working on a TV adaptation, with Matthew Aldrich (the co-writer of Pixar's Coco) acting as showrunner. But even now, the property's future is uncertain; just last month, Narnia movie producer - and Lewis' stepson - Douglas Gresham admitted he hasn't heard anything about the series from Netflix in some time. Still, while Chronicles of Narnia 4 might be dead, fans may yet be reunited with Aslan and the other inhabitants of Lewis' fantasy realm on the small screen in the near(?) future.
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June 18, 2020 at 05:51AM
