“We are starting to talk to Fox and talk to the C.S. Lewis estate now about The Magician’s Nephew being our next film.”
The recent interview with Michael Flaherty, co-founder and president of Walden Media, revealed that rather than continuing chronologically with The Silver Chair, the fourth book in C. S. Lewis’ acclaimed series, the studio would instead film the sixth – and penultimate – book.
Though Fleherty notes The Magician’s Nephew as his second favourite book in the series, the decision to drop the Pevensie children and their cousin Eustace Scrubb comes from decidedly a more cynical place.
“What’s interesting is that the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe over this period of time sold twice as many books as Prince Caspian and it did twice as much at the box office. Prince Caspian sold a third of the books as Dawn Treader and did a third at the box office.”
Often quoted the second most popular book in the series, this wishful thinking predicts that The Magician’s Nephew would have the most potential to emulate The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe’s box office success and avoid the diminishing returns which have plagued the franchise to date.
The Magician’s Nephew, an origin’s story which describes Aslan’s creation of Narnia, would star Londoners Digory Kirke (played by Jim Broadbent in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe) and Polly Plumber and act as a prequel to the existing trilogy of films. As such, the film will explain how Narnia came into existence, why there is a lamppost in the middle of the forest and where the White Witch originally came for – hopefully necessitating the return of Tilda Swinton, easily the best thing in the franchise to date.
With the script not yet written, and the possibility of unrest between the parties involved, it is likely that the fourth Narnia film – whatever it happens to be – is still some way off.