Walden Media is one of the few film companies out there today which consistently puts out quality family films (”Narnia,” City of Ember, Bridge to Terabithia, Charlotte’s Web), but unfortunately, few of their films have made enough money to warrant being called true successes. The first (and perhaps second) “Narnia” movie was box office gold, but Terabithia, Charlotte’s Web, and a few others make only moderate amounts of money and some Walden films are downright flops (City of Ember, The Seeker). Now, Disney in effect wants to cancel  “The Chronicles of Narnia.”

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With just three weeks of sales figures available, “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” is one of the top ten DVDs of 2008.  From its release on December 2 though December 21, “Prince Caspian” sold over 5.1 million units, generating about $85 million in revenue.

A full chart is available at The Numbers.

The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis

Welcome to Tumnus’s Book Shelf where we review any and all books related to The Chronicles of Narnia and CS Lewis! For today’s book we will be covering CS Lewis’s The Problem of Pain.

Title: Problem of Pain

Author: CS Lewis
Publisher: HarperOne
ISBN-10: 0060652969
ISBN-13: 978-0060652968

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As you all know by now, Disney decided recently not to continue co-producing and co-financing the Narnia film franchise.  This does seem unfortunate, but there is hope. “There’s a right bit more than hope. Aslan is on the move.” Quite literally. Walden Media isn’t giving up hope on the series yet. Apparently, they will be shopping it around to other studios to see if anyone is interested. But what studio might be interested? Why would a studio pick up this franchise? Even supposing it gets picked up, is it possible for the franchise to survive the studio-hop?

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I have been meaning to write about these DVDs from Disney Educational Products, but I couldn’t remember what they were called.  I kept searching for ‘Teacher Edition’ or ‘Educator Edition’ or ‘Education Edition.’   I finally decided to try the term ‘Classroom’ to describe it, and there it was.

On December 2 of this month, Disney Educational Products released both of Disney and Walden Media’s Chronicles of Narnia films in special Classroom Editions.

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I wanted to make this clear:

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is NOT a dead property. It is now being shopped around to other studios. Walden Media is still backing this series 150%. Thank you, Walden Media. You rock!

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Wow, when I woke up today, on Christmas Eve, I did not expect to read this headline all over my inbox. I did notice an awful lot of stories with Narnia in the title, and as I started to look at them, the first one I noticed was this headline: Disney jumps ship on next “Narnia.” My heart sank. Disney has been so good to us, here at NarniaFans.com, that I was looking forward to working with them again on the next Narnia.

Here’s hoping that another studio takes the opportunity to pick up where Disney left off. Come on, Fox! Get on board, and do this series to the end! We’re rooting for you!

From Reuters/The Hollywood Reporter:

“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” will have to sail without Disney.

The studio said Tuesday that for budgetary and logistical reasons it will not exercise its option to co-produce and co-finance the next “Narnia” movie with producer Walden Media.

The third entry in the series, based on the classic books by C.S. Lewis, was in preproduction and set for a spring shoot for a planned May 2010 release. The development puts the participation of the talent attached in doubt. Michael Apted was on board to direct a script by Steven Knight. The key players of the second installment, “Prince Caspian” — Ben Barnes, Georgie Henley, William Moseley and Anna Popplewell — were to return for the third film.

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NarniaFans Staff Member, Jonathon D. Svendsen, is going to be featured in the second issue of  Silver Leaves, which is put out by the White Tree Fund, a Tolkien-related publication. The theme for this issue is dedicated to the Inklings. Fans of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien know that the Inklings was the name of the informal literary group that consisted of CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Charles Williams and many others.

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This post is partially about satiating a geeky desire and partially about looking at what went right and wrong in the two Narnia movies (specifically the marketing aspect). This will not be in-depth, just to warn you.

First, let’s take a look at the “teaser” trailer (it’s a long teaser at around two and a half minutes) for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and see what stands out.

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