Georgie Henley turned 9 while playing Lucy in “The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” so nobody needed to teach her about wonderment.
The movie, of course, is the first in a potential franchise based on C. S. Lewis’s fantasy classic.
In case you don’t remember the books’ making you levitate with joy when you were a kid, “Lion” concerns British siblings who pass through an armoire into Narnia, where they battle the White Witch in the name of the noble lion Aslan.
“We built the set for Narnia and we took Georgie up there blindfolded,” says director Andrew Adamson (“Shrek”). “Then we just let her go.
What we got was not ‘acting.’ She was literally trembling with excitement.” That’s Georgie to your lower left, part of an exclusive first look at the cast.
“Lion” opens Dec. 9. Expect a PG smash that neither enhances nor ignores the book’s Christian overtones and is light on gore. Disney, teaming with Walden Media, will air a TV teaser simultaneously in more than 30 countries on May 7.
Narnia, here we come.
-Jeff Giles
Photos: Phil Bray
