Movies & TV

The part is one of the biggest movie roles of the year – and Tilda Swinton has landed it. She will play the wicked White Witch who rules as the ice queen of Narnia, the fictional land created by C. S. Lewis where it’s always winter but never Christmas, in his classic novel The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe.

James McAvoy, one of the stars of award-winning TV drama State Of Play and TV series Shameless, is rumoured to have been offered the role of Mr Tumnus, the Narnian creature who tries to help the children after they stumble into his world via an old wardrobe.

Braving rain, 300 tall and short people turned out to the Auckland casting call for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

And the film’s officials had a message for those who stayed away: “If you can’t handle the rain you can’t handle a film set,” said extras casting co-ordinator Victoria Cole.

The prolific Harry Gregson-Williams has landed yet another major scoring assignment – perhaps his most prestigious so far. He will compose the music for Disney’s and Walden Media’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe based on the novel by C.S. Lewis. The film is directed by Andrew Adamson with whom Gregson-Williams just worked on Shrek 2 as well as its popular 2001 predecessor.

Pippin Skywalker sent us an e-mail with the name of the Production Company in New Zealand, and also the name of the Casting Director for the films. Here’s what they said:

Don McAlpine, one of Australia’s most distinguished film-makers, is now preparing to shoot a big-screen adaptation of C. S. Lewis’s novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in New Zealand. He celebrated his 70th birthday yesterday at his home at MacMasters Beach.

Shooting for the first of the Narnia films starts in June. A crew 200 strong arrived in Auckland New Zealand today and was welcome with a Powhiri. Shooting will take place in Auckland, Christchurch and Queenstown.

Walden, a relative newcomer to the movie industry, envisages another business opportunity in Narnia: educational publishing, school workshops and teacher training.

For “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” Rhythm and Hues will create matte paintings, as well as bring to life a cast of creatures from the C.S. Lewis children’s classic as photo-realistic computer-generated characters, including Aslan, a talking lion.