Fox Saves Narnia

It’s cold when your producing partner drops out.  

It looks like Narnia has found a savior. Variety reports that Fox will fill the void left when Disney bowed out of Walden Media’s plans to film the entire seven book series (remember? we talked about this). Films of the first two books, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” and “Prince Caspian” have been released. Fox will work with Walden to film the third book, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.” They hope to have it in theaters for the 2010 holiday season.

Well, at least that release date will make sense–the earnest “Wardrobe” (hey, I could call it any number of things) was a big hit when it was released during the family friendly holiday season in 2005. “Prince Caspian,” though, was released last year in the beginning of the summer blockbuster season, and while it performed respectably, it got lost in the “Iron Man” and “Incredible Hulk” shuffle.

The budget for “Dawn Treader” will be in the $140 million area, which is a considerable difference from the $215 billion it took to make “Prince Caspian.” That’s a little weird, because “Dawn Treader” is on a ship, and they travel places and see weird things, and all that. I guess those must have been some pretty fancy battles in “Prince Caspian.”

Anyway, glad to see the project’s back on. When I was a kid (wait, what? I’m not anymore?), my favorite book in the series was “Dawn Treader.” But then while rereading them a million times, you know, the way you reread books over and over when you’re a kid and never seem to have time to do when you’re an adult, I fell in love with “The Silver Chair,” which is kind of an oddball book in the series, but I love it nonetheless. I don’t care if they ever make a movie of that one; I think I’ll just read it again.