Post-production work on New Zealand director Andrew Adamson’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is under way in London. Adult actors including Tilda Swinton, Dawn French, Jim Broadbent, Rupert Everett and all the children have been in and out of an edit suite laying down additional voice tracks on the movie, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reports. The four children are relatively unknown British child actors – Georgie Henley, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell and Skandar Keynes.
Irish actor Liam Neeson is voicing the role of leading lion Aslan, despite reports that New Zealand-born actor Russell Crowe was initially in negotiations to play the heroic lion in the Disney-Walden production.
Adamson has said the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe will be very different from other children’s movies such as Harry Potter. “It is a story about a family and the fact that it happens in a fantasy world on epic proportions is really just an expansion of what is going on for them.”
The battle scenes were shot on the open plains and glaciers near Flock Hill, Christchurch, and scenes featuring Aslan the lion’s camp and training grounds were shot near Oamaru. Production then moved to the Czech Republic and Poland to film snow scenes because the snow in New Zealand was not deep enough.