It’s only been six years since Voyage of the Dawn Treader limped into theatres and then dragged itself back out again, so of course now’s exactly the right time to finally make that Silver Chair movie!
Image: Disney
We last heard about this project back in January, when producer Mark Gordon said there was “active” development on it. He said a lot of other obfuscating things about it being a “brand new franchise”, which was repeated with today’s news that TriStar is funding the movie with eOne and the Mark Gordon Company. To be clear, this is a new franchise only insofar as new people are funding it. It’s still just moving on to the next book in the series, not starting over.
The real thing distinguishing this movie from the three predecessors is that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian were made by Disney. Voyage of the Dawn Treader came from Dune Entertainment and Fox. And now a whole new company is going to try to make lemonade from these lemons.
I loved these books growing up. And I owned giant VHS copies of the BBC miniseries. So I hope to God a third studio’s the charm when it comes to making the movies work. We’ll have wait and see.
[Deadline]