The family of CS Lewis will miss out on the lion’s share of the multi-million-pound royalties from films based on his Chronicles of Narnia.
The first movie, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, opens in London next month amid expectation that a cycle of Narnia films will take over from the Lord of the Rings trilogy as the “must see” Christmas movie for years to come. It will also compete with the films of the Harry Potter books.
A new biography of Lewis, who died on November 22, 1963, the day of John F Kennedy’s assassination, claims £50m has been paid for the film rights. But the money will not go to his surviving relatives.
Just as the late JRR Tolkien, Lewis’s friend and fellow Oxford don, surrendered the film rights to his Lord of the Rings books – he received £105,000 to settle a tax bill – Lewis’s two stepsons, David and Douglas Gresham, sold their rights to his estate in the 1970s.
A screen adaptation has already been written for Prince Caspian, the second book in the seven-title Narnia series. If all the books are filmed, they could easily eclipse the £1.6 billion global box office takings of the Rings movies.
The initial signs of “Narniamania” include a 40-fold increase in the sale of the book on which the film is based. There are to be 33 books by academics exploring themes such as Lewis’s use of fantasy as an allegory for the struggle between Christianity and evil.The excitement is not just in literary circles. David and Victoria Beckham are planning a Narnia theme party for their older children, Brooklyn and Romeo, this Christmas.