January 29th, 2009 -- Written by Rodney
With the economy scaring the pants off of everyone, even the studios are hedging their bets. Even the Chronicles of Narnia series faced inevitable obscurity as Disney announced that they didn’t think Voyage of the Dawn Treader would be worth the financial risk and cut it from their prospects.
However, fear not Naria fans! It seems that Fox has picked up the baton and intends to carry on the franchise without Disney.
MovieWeb says:
When Walt Disney Pictures left the project, Fox got the first chance to make The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of The Dawn Treader due to the shared Fox Walden marketing and distribution label. The label made the promise to make the project. The plan is for a 2010 release via the Fox Walden label.Currently, there is a no budget and work is still being done on the script but the plan is for a 2010 release around the holidays. It will come out via the Fox Walden banner.
Fox and Walden plan to go halves on production and P&A costs for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of The Dawn Treader. The budget is currently in the $140 million budget range.
I liked the first two movies and I was a little disappointed to find that they were not going to finish out the franchise. There was still more Narnia books to adapt and the stories are wonderful.
So maybe in hindsight Disney will kick themselves for letting this option go, or the movie will not cash in as much as the first two and they will have a quiet “I told you so” look on their collective faces.
Time will tell!
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What happened to real budgets? 140 million dollars? Pfft! Give me a break- A really creative director and set designer could make this movie great without the overinflated budget.
If Hollywood moguls would cut some of their budgets into two, we would have more movies to comment on. This same thinking heralds back to the Mickey Rouke post.
At least the budget’s gone down from the $200+ that it was before, but it’s still a ridiculous amount of money. How much more real do we need special effects to get?
Well, they could easily recycle a lot of the CGI and costumes and such since the characters in Narnia don’t really change that much. So 140 million dollars should be sufficient for this film, I agree with everyone about budgets. They should really concentrate on making the story good and worry less about the special effects.
As far as Disney letting go…… I think they made a mistake as well. The Prince Caspian book was my least favorite of the series and it still turned out to be a pretty good fantasy movie, actually looking for much more in this next installment.
I am happy about this news, but i am still a little worried because of Fox. They seem to want their movies around the 90 minutes no matter how much it hurts the story. This movie CANNOT be done in 90 minutes without cutting out a lot
@RonSalon
See the BBC adaptation of Narnia for why a big budget is important. :P
Holy Crap Jon H you are absolutely right
Bear in mind that it was made in the 80’s
I understand your point. Did you see Pan’s Labrynth? It cost 19 million dollars and looked like it cost 140 million.
But anyways, I am glad about this because Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the best book (in my opinion)
+1, I was just about to say that. It would be a shame if they half-assed this one, but I’ll stay optimistic.
I think that both films were great. I watched them both for the second time about a week ago and must say that for whatever reason they are more appealing to me than Harry Potter (sorry HP fans) This films are fantasy filled, with a strong story behind it. I on a personal level like the 2nd film much more than the first one despite the fact that it made less money. Looking forward to a third.
The second movie was terrible and Disney apparently agrees with me. This is one of those franchises that will make money even if they release complete garbage a la Fantastic Four. For a fantasy flick, Prince was bland and why make bland “remakes” when you can tell amazingly original engaging stories like Wall-E and Finding Nemo? Thank you Disney for letting go.
Nothing to do with quality Josh.
They had to look at the potential the film had to make money. In this harsh financial reality they had to draw a line with profitability on one side and risk on the other.
They simply were not willing to take the risk with money being so tight.
Fox is.
Also, Pixar is part of Disney (again)but Disney makes its own films operating Pixar as a separate entity. Pixar’s releases don’t have anything to do with Disney’s choice to make a film or not.
More Ben Barnes=Happy Kristina
The first film was okay to me. Nothing special. The second one was fairly dull, and the rivalry between Peter and Caspian came across as two high school jocks fighting for a spot on the varsity team rather than two guys fighting for control of a kingdom. The entire film just felt petty and unnecessary. There was no legitimate tension, no real threats to any of the main characters, and nothing was going on plot-wise to keep me interested.
Reepicheep was cool, though.