Cary Granat has just returned from the Sahara, but his mind is fixed firmly in winter. The chief executive and co-founder of Walden Media, the Hollywood filmmaker, was in North Africa to check progress on a desert epic. But his journey was interrupted by constant calls about a far bigger project – code-named “The Hundred Year Winter”.
For more than a year, the title has disguised pre-production work and casting plans for some of the most coveted rights in the film industry: The Chronicles of Narnia.
Earlier this month, Walden Media finally unveiled plans to bring The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to the big screen in a $100m-$150m production to be co-financed and distributed by Walt Disney.
The deal follows years of negotiation with the CS Lewis estate, where the author’s family favoured Walden over multi-million-dollar offers from studios including Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount and Universal.
Granat, a former senior executive at Miramax (rather than the misspelt Hollywood heart-throb his name might suggest), recalls: “We would not let them leave the room until we had a deal. We forged a relationship with the estate to work closely on the development phase of the project.”
Accommodating the family’s wishes helped Walden to clinch the deal. Douglas Gresham, stepson of CS Lewis, explains: “Fans of the series have been waiting for generations for a film that faithfully adapts the Narnia books for the screen.”
The seven Narnia books – including Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Last Battle – have sold more than 85m copies worldwide. And if the debut film proves a similar hit, it could spawn a cinema phenomenon emulating the Lord of the Rings trilogy – in turn creating a bow-wave for additional book sales, computer games, toys and other merchandise.
But Walden, a relative newcomer to the movie industry, envisages another business opportunity in Narnia: educational publishing, school workshops and teacher training.
The company hopes to extract additional revenues from learning tools and books linked to its screen productions – most of them adapted from favourite school texts. “We believe there is an enormous market opportunity in the world of education and entertainment,” says Granat. “If a studio could be born that
marries the best of family entertainment and a new approach to education, we could show kids an alternative of what they learn at school.”
That concept impressed the CS Lewis estate. It was also embraced three years ago by Philip Anschutz, the telecoms and entertainment billionaire who invested the seed capital for Walden and now owns 90 per cent of the equity.
Anschutz – whose other assets include the Millennium Dome, four Major League soccer clubs and Regal Entertainment, America’s largest cinema chain – sees a lucrative link between films, classic books and education. With his backing and co-financing from Disney, Walden has produced the screen adaptation of Holes, the cult children’s book by Louis Sachar, and Ghosts of the Abyss, the 3D underwater film by James Cameron.
They will be followed this summer by a remake of Around the World in 80 Days and Anne Holm’s refugee classic, I Am David. “When Philip Anschutz likes a business he builds it very quickly,” says Granat. “We have a reputation as a company that works with real authors. We have tied up eight of the top 12 children’s books, such as with Jules Verne and CS Lewis, and we hold the North American rights to The Hobbit.”
The synergies between education and filmmaking are being realised in several ways. Walden has formed a joint venture with Regal Entertainment, called the Reel Think, which uses the chain’s cinemas as “virtual school rooms”. Celebrities are invited to conduct classes about Walden’s literary-based films, with more than 20,000 children linked by satellite from cinemas around the US.
Walden now plans to bring the scheme to Britain, where it’s in talks with Entertainment Group, the independent film distributor currently negotiating to buy the Odeon chain. It has also launched stage productions of best-selling books including Holes and Heidi, along with related school workshops at its own theatre in Denver – home to Anschutz’s private company.
Other initiatives include writing schemes linked to the films, and tie-ups between Walden’s “in-house educators” and school curriculum directors. By doing so, Walden hopes to capture part of the $18bn US market for learning aids and supplemental education material.
It also sees a market in teacher training, offering seminars for teachers renewing their classroom accreditation. “It’s another area where we have jumped in,” says Granat. “The professional teacher training industry is worth $3bn a year. We want to marry content and education, and getting the content was the crucial piece.”
Granat, whose previous credits include Spy Kids for Miramax and overseeing production of Babe for MCA/Universal, hopes revenues from education will eventually complement box-office income. “Film is the largest revenue business. But the goal is to build the company so film and education revenues are on parity,” he says.
That could see a whole range of teacher activities and assignments built around the Narnia tales. HarperCollins, part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, has already agreed to republish the books to coincide with the release of the first film next Christmas.
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is being shot in New Zealand after Walden tried, but failed, to win sufficient financial incentives to make the film in Britain, home to CS Lewis. Given the $750m in tourism revenues that New Zealand enjoyed following the success of Lord of the Rings, executives were surprised that the British government did not work harder to secure the location for the opening Narnia production.
“People go to visit Middle Earth in New Zealand; we would have like to have done that for the UK,” says one person involved in the film. Granat declines to comment on the location issue, other than to stress that Walden has spent the past four months assembling a cast in Britain.
Once completed, the team of actors will be marshalled by Andrew Adamson, the director behind Shrek, the computer-animated blockbuster. According to the pre-publicity, Adamson will create an enchanted world and set the stage “for a classic battle of epic proportions”.
The profits will be similarly epic if the films achieve the sort of following enjoyed by the Lord of the Rings trilogy or the Harry Potter series. Walden and Disney are thought to have agreed a 50-50 profit sharing scheme on the Narnia series, similar to the previous tie-up between Disney and Pixar, the computer animation studio.
But unlike Pixar – which is abandoning its Disney relationship after delivery of the next two films – Walden has secured the Narnia merchandising and licensing rights vital to its education project. “Everything we do in film, television or theatre must have broad out-reach possibilities in education,” says Granat. “We’re building a new business model where other group sales, such as in education, are driving a larger part of the box office.”
tim.burt@ft.com