The amazing array of movie presentations at Comic-Con International in San Diego wrapped-up with some very special surprises and announcements during the panel for Walt Disney Pictures’ The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, based on the series of books from C.S. Lewis. Those who decided to skip out on the convention after Saturday’s full day certainly missed out on a great preview of what to expect from the film.
After showing the recent trailer, the film’s executive producer Perry Moore came out to tell the rapt audience why he was so excited to finally be able to make a movie that was true to the books he loved as a child. He then introduced the panel’s very special surprise guest, live via satellite from London, director Andrew Adamson and producer Mark Johnson, who were working with the actors who play the children to do looping and ADR work on the film. “You know, this delay thing really sucks,” Adamson said after a bunch of bizarre crosstalk during the panel.
Moore was then joined on stage by make up effects supervisor Howard Berger from K.N.B. and Weta Workshop’s Richard Taylor and Ben Wootten, who designed and created all of the creatures from the film, as well as visual effects supervisor Dean Wright, who dealt with assembling all the computer-generated and practical effects for the film. Taylor, a two-time Oscar winner for his work on “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, was received warmly by his many fans in the audience, who he had made from his previous Comic-Con appearances for those films.
Richard and Ben talked about the design of the creatures, while showing slides of paintings, concept sketches and maquettes of some of the creatures, including the satyrs, a sprite, centaurs, a maugrim and a mermaid, as well as a few pictures of Aslan and Ron Perlman as a minotaur. They also showed some of the detail of the armor, shields and swords wielded by the four Pevensie children.
After each of the specialists talked a bit about their involvement with bringing Narnia to life, Adamson announced that he had his own surprise guests and the camera panned over to the four young actors that play the Pevensie kids, the heroes of “Narnia”: William Moseley (Peter), Anna Popplewell (Susan), Skandar Keynes (Edmund) and Georgie Henley (Lucy).
Adamson closed the panel by making it official that actor Liam Neeson will indeed be providing the voice for the lion king Aslan and that his parts have already been recorded.
