Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely are really fun to hang out with. Quick witted, smart, and funny guys that are very clever and talented storytellers, they wrote the first couple of Narnia films, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, before their screenplay for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was re-written by others prior to filming. They’ve since gone on to write all three Captain America films, including The Silver Chair director Joe Johnston’s Captain America: The First Avenger. They also re-wrote Thor: The Dark World and wrote the screenplays for Avengers: Infinity War and the currently untitled Avengers 4.
I’m glad that someone asked them about The Silver Chair, because I had been wondering what their thoughts were for some time now. I just don’t have any way to contact them, or I would have asked.
Markus and McFeely confirmed to IndieWire in a recent interview that they, unfortunately, have no involvement in The Silver Chair film. But, Christopher Markus called The Silver Chair “the most cinematic of the remaining books. It has the sort of quest narrative that would easily become a movie, so that is a good choice.”
“They’re gonna be in trouble if they, like other people, have felt like, ‘We can turn this into a great big fantasy franchise,’ because the books are all different, and not each one is gonna give you that same movie. You can make a thoughtful movie from each one and it would be great if the people were prepared to do that.”
This is good advice to anyone making the Chronicles of Narnia into feature films or television series, or anything of the sort. I’ve thought for many years that each Narnia film could have its’ own writer(s) and director(s), and that would be perfectly fine. Share resources, make sure the world of Narnia is consistently portrayed, and do loads of pre-production with a great shared art department.
What do you think of their comments? Do you agree?