Just in time for the Blu-ray/DVD release of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Christianity Today has an interview with Micheal Flaherty, Walden Media co-founder and president.
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe opened in December 2005 to a massive audience, earning more than $1 billion in box office ($745 million) and DVD sales ($332 million) combined and critical reviews were good.
2008's "Prince Caspian" brought in less than half of the domestic box office that LWW had drawn, and 2010's "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" only about a third as much. Critical ratings have also dropped for each successive film.
"The Silver Chair" comes next in the sequence of books, but Flaherty said Walden and 20th Century Fox, which distributes the movies, have mostly decided on "The Magician's Nephew" — Narnia's "origins story"— for their next project. (Narnia scholar Devin Brown says Lewis himself would agree with that choice; see his reasons here.)
The producers think "The Magician's Nephew" has the best opportunity to draw the largest audience. The box office has pretty closely followed the sales pattern of the books. "Prince Caspian" sells about half of the books of "Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe," and it did about half of the box office. Caspian sells about a third more books than "Dawn Treader," and it did about a third more box office domestically. That pattern continues to decline with "Silver Chair" being the weakest book in the series in terms of consumer demand.
Flaherty states: "We just think the origin tale of 'The Magician's Nephew' is a great one, and it brings back the characters that have proven to be the most popular—a lot of Aslan and the White Witch. It explains the origin of the lamppost and the wardrobe."
While the domestic box office dipped significantly with each of the three films, the foreign has remained fairly strong. Domestic accounted for 39 percent of the earnings for Wardrobe, 33 percent for Caspian, and just 25 percent for Dawn Treader. In fact, because of overseas sales, "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" is approaching the same box office of Prince Caspian.
The films are obviously tied closely to the books and Flaherty makes an interesting point about the Narnia series in comparison to current book franchises. He notes most popular book franchises (e.g, Harry Potter and Twilight) are consistent in sales from book to book, but that's not the case for Narnia. Part of the problem may be that there is no character beyond Aslan that runs through the entire series.
"Lucy has the greatest run out of all the characters, but she only appears in three books. So there's something different in terms of the anticipation of not being able to follow one character from the first book to the last."
Secular critics aren't sticklers for whether the films stick to the books; they're mainly judging the movies as movies. But some reviews and opinions are from "Narnia police" types who nitpick every detail.
Flaherty has interesting insights to why they value comments from Narnia purists. You can read the full article here.
