“It was essential. A lot of our characters, principal characters: Aslan, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, don’t actually exist, so it basically is an animated film within a live action film. When I say animated, it’s not gonna look like a cartoon obviously, it’s photorealistic, but the characters are essentially animated.”
The casting of the voice of Aslan is still a great mystery, at least for those of us on the outside. We weren’t able to get any scoops on set, but Adamson and Johnson both indicated that the rumors circulating so far (Sean Connery, Morgan Freeman and James Earl Jones) were way off-base. “We have some ideas. I don’t think it’s important that it’s an A-List star. On the other hand, you know, I’ve said this about the Shrek principals, because everyone asks how important it was that they were stars, and the answer I have for that is, it wasn’t important that they were stars, but there’s a reason they were stars. It’s because they’re very good at what they do. In this case, I’ll be casting according to somebody who’s just appropriate for the role. I don’t have a strong opinion about whether they’re an A-List star or not. It’s a short list. There’s, you know, it’s obviously too early to say anything, and it’s something that I’ve been kind of postponing to some degree, because I want to make sure we get the right person.”
