Voyage of the Dawn Treader article in Empire Magazine

While in England for the past week, I managed to track down the latest issue of Empire, which has Harry Potter on the cover. However, it does have a spread on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It’s a very long article, that features the same photo that MTV released last week. With the summer movie season over, just about every magazine that talks about the entertainment industry is going to make mention of Narnia. I must note, however, that Entertainment Weekly was notably weak in this regard, giving it only a single sentence in their fall preview issue.

Anyway, here are some highlights from the article, written by Olly Richards:

“The producer called me up on Christmas Eve 2008 and just told me, ‘Don’t worry'” says Ben Barnes, aka Caspian X, king of Narnia and captain of the good ship Dawn Treader, screwing up his unreasonably good-looking face. “To which my response was, ‘Okay… Do you mind if I do? Just a bit?” Barnes had reason to be a bit blue that Christmas. And he was far from the only one.

Everyone involved in the Narnia franchise had got coal in their stocking that year. After two movies – The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe and Prince Caspian (in which Barnes joined the franchise) – Disney had decided it would not be bankrolling any more adventures for Aslan, the Pevensie children and all their weird, scurrying friends, and locked the door to the wardrobe indefinitely.

The decision stunned everyone, not least because Dawn Treader is widely regarded as the best of the books; at least, the most cinematic. The follow-up to Prince Caspian welcomes only Lucy and Edmund Pevensie (Georgie Henley and Skandar Keynes) back to Narnia, returning three Narnian years later with their irritating cousin Eustace (Son Of Rambow’s Will Poulter) after they’re sucked into a watery painting and thrust aboard the Dawn Treader as it embarks on a mission to save the seven banished Lords Of Narnia. There are sword fights, mystical lands, bizarre creatures and lashing storms at every turn.

“It definitely shook us,” remembers producer Mark Johnson of the moment the series seemed to have breathed its last. “You wonder, ‘Is anyone going to want us. Will we find the right place?’ It was certainally a blow.”

[…]

Narnia is now a 20th Century Fox joint. The franchise-collecting studio snapped up the rights to (potentially) adapt the four other entries in C.S. Lewis’ book series shortly after Disney called it quits; Fox had actually shown interest in the rights earlier in the long process to getting The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe in front of cameras. Whilst it’s possible it may have just spent an awful lot of money on someone else’s old broken toy, there is a school of thought that the studio has nabbed itself a bit of a bargain because, in the book series, Voyage Of The Dawn Treader is where the story hits its stride and becomes less about precocious children being agog at talking, slightly camp mice, and more about adventure and dragons and killing big sea monsters. Which is clearly much more interesting.

“[Looking back on Caspian’s lower box office] you can’t say it wasn’t sold right or we picked the wrong release day. You have to look within the movie itself,” says Johnson when asked about the long-term viability of a series currently on a downward box-office trajectory. “I think it was probably the book Prince Caspian. It’s less about the Narnian creatures and more about this sort of Shakespearean story about Caspian trying to find out who killed his father. This book is a great adventure. It’s lots of islands where they just keep getting attacked!”

“This is really a completely different thing to the last two films,” adds Apted. “We don’t go to Narnia, we’re creating a whole new world… I think it is a little more grown up. We’ve certainly got some huge impressive scenes. There’s a very big sea battle.”

Which meant a big shoot on water, obviously? No. “I went to speak to every director who’s ever shot on water – Peter Wier, Gore Verbinski – and they all said the same thing: ‘Don’t,'” says Apted as we stand next to his full-sized ship, which sits not on the ocean but on a huge hydraulic gimble next to the ocean, to create the illusion of being on water without any of the complications. “Well I’m not daft.”

The sea-monster sequence apparently pushes the fake ship to its limits, pitching it hither and yon as the now not-so-young Edmund gets his chance to become the franchise’s new hero, slashing at baddies in a manner previously reserved for his older brother. “This is Edmund stepping to the fore,” says Keynes, who’s a bit taller and more bulked up than his previous sulkier appearences. “It has been strange sometimes that it’s just Georgie and I, without William (Moseley, as Peter) and Anna (Popplewell, as Susan), but the sword stuff is a lot of fun.”

The Dawn Treader that arrives in Cinemas in December won’t be the version originally planned. In the three years since Apted first came on board, the film has been through countless re-writes, travelled to more locations than even the story’s fantastical voyage can manage, and found a whole new home.

“Would I do it again?” Apted Laughs out loud, for the first time in our interview. “It’s a bit too early to answer that. I certainly had no idea what i was letting myself in for and there have been some real testing time, but i think it’s made the film better. Would I do it again? Would I do it again? Never say never.”

As Fox tentatively moves towards making the next in the series, The Silver Chair (the one with all the giants, and no Pevensies), Mark Johnson is, at least, confidently looking onward to new horizons. “We got there in the end. We’ve got a new home. Look, I’m still close with many people at Disney and I firmly believe they wish us well.” He pauses, adjusts his glasses and gives a hint of a giggle. “We’ll maybe not that well.”

-image from Empire Magazine via Narniaweb