Someone once asked me if living in London was a disadvantage for covering film news / reviews. My response is always the same, I love living in London because at one time or another, you’re bound to have a world premiere, get a on set, or, as in this case, bump into someone who has a big budget Hollywood movie on the way!
Our friend Andy Gibbons writes for MSN and lives in Wimbledon which not only hosts the world’s biggest lawn tennis tournament, but has The Chronicles of Narnia: The Dawn Treader star, Ben Barnes wandering the streets! Andy bumped into Ben and managed to get an imprompu interview with him and asked him some questions about the Dawn Treader which is due out 10th December!
With the trailer for The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader debuting this week the buzz has really started, it promises to be a big Christmas release….
Yeah, I hope it is. Personally I’m quite excited that it’s going to be 3D. It’s my favourite of the seven books, I think it’s one of the best stories and it’s got some good human characters as well – I think Eustace, who Will Poulter plays brilliantly, is a really funny character. It’s got a lot of the fun magical stuff of the first ones and I’ve got some fun action stuff which is cool. It’s going to be good I think.
We saw our first glimpse of footage this week with the trailer (you can watch it below) but we don’t see much of you in it. Have you seen it and how do you think it reflects the film?
I have seen it and I think they’ve done the right thing in trying to show the scope of it and trying to show the different things in it. Obviously I was the focus of the marketing campaign of the middle film so it’s probably not very sensible to do the same thing again.
So is there less pressure on your shoulders this time round?
Yeah, I’m off the hook a bit on this one.
You’ve got a new director in Michael Apted – what’s he bought to the movie?
Just a sort of an outside eye and a very human touch really. I think he was as anxious as any of us going in to it. When we first met and spoke he told me how anxious he was about the scale of it but I think he did a great job and I think it’s going to have an interesting flavour to it. Saying that I haven’t seen it yet.
This is the first Narnia film without Disney behind it (Twentieth Century Fox partnered up with Walden Media after Disney dropped the franchise) – did that affect production at all?
Fox were very hands on during the whole process which was completely expected and understandable. It’s nice that, in a way, to have someone who really cares about it – not that Disney didn’t, it was obviously very precious to them too – but in terms of people going to see them film, apart from the logo at the beginning I don’t think it’s going to make a huge amount of difference.
