The Last Battle? Narnia Franchise in Jeopardy; John Carter of Mars Looms as Replacement
John Carter of Mars appears to be quite different from Narnia.
IESB is reporting, via Jim Hill’s blog, that Disney is wavering in its plans to film all seven Narnia books. Hill writes:
From what I’ve heard, studio suits seem to be cooling to the idea of producing movie versions of all seven of C.S. Lewis’s “Narnia” books. And unless “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” does truly huge box office once it’s released to theaters in May of this year … Disney & Walden Media (i.e. Mickey’s partner on the “Narnia” film series) will probably still go forward with production of the already-in-development “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.” But after that … The Mouse would then mostly likely pull the plug on the rest of the proposed “Narnia” film series.
And were that to happen … That would then leave Walt Disney Pictures with a very big hole in its release schedule for 2011 and beyond. And given “Narnia” was initially supposed to have been this on-going franchise, with the Mouse once envisioning releasing a brand-new chapter in the “Chronicles” to theaters every May from 2008 through 2013 … Well, Mickey would love to be able to fill that hole with another film franchise.
And that film franchise is apparently Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter of Mars. The prospective Mars trilogy would mark Pixar’s first solo foray into live action film (Brad Bird’s live action 1906 will be a co-production of Disney/Pixar and Warner Brothers). Wall*E director Andrew Stanton is supposedly on tap to direct and Mark Andrews has completed a first draft of a screenplay that Disney likes (I’m sorry, I don’t know who Mark Andrews is…an IMDB search turned up about 20 Mark Andrews, none listed as writers…). The idea is to get this project going as soon as Stanton has completed all Wall*E promotional responsibilities and DVD prep.
To further add to the intrigue, here are some domain names Disney registered last week:
Previously they’ve registered:
- JOHNCARTEROFMARS-MOVIE.COM
- JOHNCARTEROFMARS-THEMOVIE.COM
- JOHNCARTEROFMARSTHEMOVIE.COM
- CHILDRENOFMARS.COM
Hmmm…it’s almost like they’re up to something…
It’s hard to see why Disney is so anxious to jump off the Narnia train. The first movie did well at the box office, and the books are known names, easily sellable quantities. It doesn’t seem like they were extravangantly costly movies to make. John Carter of Mars seems like a reasonable prospect for a successful franchise, but it’s not exactly a title everyone knows. So one wonders why they’ve cooled so much on Narnia. Would Walden be able to walk away from Disney and find another partner to work on some more movies?
Meanwhile, go out all of you and register domain names with “Mars” in them; maybe you can sell them to Disney, who seems to be a little anxious about locking up every possible permutation.
2 Comments
April 12th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
I love the Narnia books but face it, there are some elements of the later ones that would give any movie studio pause.
The Silver Chair is frankly bleak, The Horse and His Boy would require massive changes in the filmed version to avoid being openly hostile to Muslims (Yes I know they aren’t really Muslims they’re Tash worshipers but come on, its not a subtle allegory.) and The Last Battle is beyond bleak, it’s actively depressing, while also being the most overtly religious of the series.
Not to mention everybody dying, including cute talking animals and a bloody death for a beautiful unicorn, plus the character of Susan being treated grotesquely unfairly in the story, plus more overtly anti-Muslim elements… a direct filmed adaptation of The Last Battle would have kids coming out of the cinema in a state of shock.
Of course as written, the John Carter books have their own challenges. They are insanely violent, a direct translation of any of them would use more movie blood in any single fight scene than Sweeney Todd did in in the entire film, the hero is a confederate soldier, Barsoom has slavery and the villains are carefully color coded. These are all elements that could be tweaked without losing the essence of the books, but they are there.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:54 am
I remember the Barsoom books (Mars) from childhood with affection and would love to see them filmed. The fact that mars never invented clothing is a minor inconveniance, it could cut production costs in the wardrobe department. I’d like to see a more adult story, but the usual plotline of the heroine being kiddnaped in the first chapter and being rescued in the last is not going to work in the twentyfirst century.
One idea is to take the real Mars and revert it back in time to when it was still a lush, diverse and exotic world, with a high technology and miriad races fighting over the last resorses of the dying planet.
A good introduction would be for NASA to find an artifact on Mars containing the jurnals of Captain John Carter written a million years in the past. ‘That’s been done before but I’ll not tell anyone if you don’t’.
Yours Yagurth
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