Spoilers are here, so anyone who hasn’t read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, you’ll want to avoid this until you read the book.
When the movie rights to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe reverted from Paramount, they were approached by many different moviemakers, but the letter from Walden Media made an impression. During the meeting with Walden, Gresham asked to speak privately with Philip Anschutz, Walden’s billionaire backer. They prayed together and came out deciding to work on the movie.
What was oddly not a major challenge was keeping the essence of the book. Although director Andrew Adamson put in some things that Gresham would have left out, and left out some things that Gresham would have included, and both of them would reach compromises on some things, Gresham could not say enough good things about the movie, which he saw in rough cut on Monday.
He said even if it’s not all as he would have done it, “It’s being made the way the Holy Spirit of God wants it made and that’s what’s important.” When he left the meeting of the C.S. Lewis foundation to head to his other engagement, he asked them to “Please pray for the movie, too.”
So, what did Gresham think of the rough cut he saw?
Gresham said “It’s going to blow you away.” During the evening, he also made the following comments:
“Absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful.”
“Utterly spectacular. So powerful.”
“Exceeded even my wildest expectations.”
He described the death of Aslan as “staggeringly beautiful and incredibly powerful.”
When asked about whether there would be Narnia McDonald’s Happy Meals, he said yes, but “Quite frankly, they are the best figurines McDonald’s has ever put out.” He also said “My mandate here is to keep the quality as high as possible.”
Read the rest of the interview at Virtual Narnia!