The Chronicles of Narnia took all of us into another magical world when the first movie got released. Beautiful scenery, talking animals combined with a story full of adventure, it connected immediately as a fairy tale would. Entering a whole new world as Harry Potter did. It has been a decade since we got another Narnia movie. So could we still get to see more of the Narniaverse or Chronicles of Narnia 4?
A Quick Brief About The Film Series
The movies of The Chronicles of Narnia are based on C.S. Lewis’ anthology. It contained seven books, three of which got adapted into movies. The first movie The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (2005) attempted to establish a new franchise.
The story was about the four Pevensie siblings, who enter Narnia through a wardrobe. They meet Aslan and together they battle the White Witch to free Narnia from the eternal winter.
The movie seemed to be targeting children, while the novels don’t. The 2008 sequel Prince Caspian had a different tone than the previous movie. The Pevensies return to Narnia and 1,300 years have passed.
They meet a prince and help him reclaim the throne. Being more serious and less ‘magical’ in its storytelling, it wasn’t as family-friendly as expected from the first film. This certainly affected the box office returns, negatively.
The third movie The Voyage of The Dawn Treader (2010) shows the two younger Pevensies and their cousin Eustace on a journey with Caspian to rescue the seven lost lords. The movie attempted to undo the things that went wrong with Prince Caspian. Unfortunately, it could not revive, faring slightly worse than the second film.
Chronicles of Narnia 4 and Failed Attempts
The first two Narnia movies were produced together by Walden Media and Disney. During the production of the third movie, Disney left because of budget disputes and creative differences. Fox took over as the distributor for the third film. Despite the downward trend, Chronicles of Narnia 4 was intended to be made.
In 2011, it was confirmed that Chronicles of Narnia 4 will be based on the sixth book The Magician’s Nephew, acting as a prequel. However, the same year, it was announced that Walden had lost the movie rights, with no chances of another Narnia movie for the next few years.
In 2013, The C.S. Lewis Company announced its deal with The Mark Gordon Company, to work on a movie adaptation of the fourth novel, The Silver Chair. Douglas Gresham, Vincent Sieber, and Mark Gordon were to produce the film, with David Magee as the writer.
In 2017, Joe Johnston was added to the team as the director. The movie claimed to ‘reboot’ the series with an entirely new team. But that was the last of the concrete information.
The Final Status of Chronicles of Narnia 4
With Sony entering as the distributor in 2016, we hoped for a revival. But the dead air remained after 2017. In November 2018, Netflix and The C.S. Lewis Company announced a new collaboration to adapt the books into a television series.
In 2019, Matthew Aldrich was added as the production supervisor and the writer to the series. With that said, nothing more has been announced yet.
Douglas Gresham, the original producer, said in May 2020 that he hasn’t heard anything from Netflix yet. This certainly puts the future of the series back into its previous uncertain state.
But this is Narnia we are talking about, and Netflix, who have adopted a number of series regardless of been made before. Getting a Narnia series would be absolutely worth the wait and Netflix do need to move further.
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