Back in the 90s, it would have been nice for BBC to have tried to dramatise the other three books, but they'd have needed a lot of puppetry, or for technology to advance rapidly, to avoid more human actors playing the animals. 

Keeping them human would have kept the series consistent, if a bit old fashioned. On the British stage, generations of children have seen humans play animals (both humorous and serious). The theatre group I work with only started using puppets in the last 15 years, and required children to use their imagination before that.

Lewis's animals are a step forward from his childhood stories, however. In Boxen the creatures were basically playing adult humans, whereas in Narnia they all behave like the creatures they are, despite talking and thinking.

I'm not sure I miss any of the proposed adaptations. Most of them would have been disappointing. They seemed to be aiming at a modern teenage audience that enjoys American action movies with no Christian faith elements. The two original Walden scriptwriters were once quoted as saying that 'Susie' was the voice of the author.  They had clearly never understood what the books were, or what they were saying. 

I'm pleased that I'm not the only one who picked for the BBC series to have continued! 😀 Low budget as the series was, it definitely has a charm to it (and I'm very nostalgic about these things), and I appreciate their closeness to the original books.

I do not like the concept of a 'modern day' Narnia, full stop.

Posted by: @col-klink

I've been meaning to post more in this topic for a long time, but I've just had so many other things I wanted to type.

Re: Aslan being a real lion in the hypothetical BBC Horse and his Boy. I'm not sure how they could have done him pouncing on Aravis that way. It'd have to be a really well-trained lion. Then again, I'm not sure how they'd do that with the puppet either. Maybe there's a way it could work. 

I know it's been a while since you posted this, but I have a thought about how the BBC could have done the Aslan pouncing on Aravis - do a slow motion pouncing scene, however, speed up the Aslan movement a bit...I'm reflecting on how they got Aslan to fly in LWW, sure his movements are very slow, if they did this but perhaps a bit faster (meanwhile showing the rest of the scene in slow motion, and show claws coming out from his paws, I think it could have been done... although the other possibility I am picturing of how they could have done it would have been similar to the Peter vs Maugrim fight in LWW - red scene, using footage of a real lion pouncing and super-imposing it over the scene?

Another lost Narnia adaptation to mention would be an animated version of The Magician's Nephew written by Douglas Lloyd McIntosh. You can see storyboards of the project through the link below if you're interested 🤩 

https://www.narniaweb.com/2019/01/storyboard-from-abandoned-magicians-nephew-movie/

@impending-doom I mentioned that one earlier in this discussion as one I'd like to see too — I now think overall I would have voted for it (rather than for completing the BBC series) if it had been an option in the poll. A hand-drawn animated cartoon of MN in the early 1980s probably wouldn't reach the heights of grandeur and wonderment that the book does, but I suspect it would have come closer to doing it justice than anything the BBC was capable of in the 1990s, with the budget (or lack of it) that they had.  

Just came across this interview with a make-up artist called John Cormican where he just casually mentions several times (as if its common knowledge) about working on a movie adaptation of LWW directed by John Boorman, the director of Excalibur (1981) amongst other things

https://makeupeffectsarchive.blogspot.com/2025/03/john-cormican-interview.html  

Is this something anyone else has ever been aware of? Feels like a pretty big deal, and yet this is literally the first I'm ever hearing of it -  he even has photos of some concept art and a make-up test he did for a hag.

"...the cancelled John Boorman version of The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe"

"There was also a version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, that I worked on for three months, and then it was shelved."

I guess i might presume this is the 1990s "Cheesburger" version, based on the chronology of the other films he is discussing.... I'm just not sure i ever realised it had a director attached to it, or that it made it three months into pre-production.

Honestly, I would have loved seeing the three remaining BBC adaptations as a child! I admit that I personally feel a nostalgia for the practical effects utilized in 1980s-1990s fantasy films. I'm fascinated how artists found ways to bring fantastical elements to life with movie magic before computer graphics.

I think I felt a little disappointed with how everything played out for the Walden Media franchise, so I wasn't too upset about Joe Johnston's The Silver Chair being shelved. I think Johnston would have done an excellent job with my favorite book in the series, but I'm also hopeful (I think?) for this fresh start with a book we haven't seen a film adaptation of yet.

Another unmade Narnia adaptation I was not aware of when I made the poll - a planned animated version in the 1960s by American animation legend Chuck Jones (Bugs Bunny, Looney Tunes, etc.)

https://www.tumblr.com/directedbychuckjones/186798113287/it-all-began-with-a-picture-of-a-faun-with-an

@icarus Fascinating, although I'm wondering if the grumpy-faced guy on the left in the second picture — with bluish skin and a white beard and red hat — is meant to be the White Witch's dwarf, Father Christmas having a bad day, or Papa Smurf in the wrong universe!!  

@courtenay and the names below the children seem all wrong too! I'd guess that the four in front of and on the right side of the wardrobe are the four, with the two on the extreme left and right front both Edmund? The girl in yellow looks more like Lucy for the 60s. The top right one is uncertain, looks dressed for snow...

The character designs in that concept feel all wrong for Narnia to me. But I do consider Chuck Jones a great director, so I probably would have liked his version better artistically (as opposed to from an adaptation perspective) than the animated version from the 70s that we did get. (Then again, I'm also a fan of a lot of the non-Narnia cartoons that adaptation's director, Bill Melendez, made, so maybe they would have been equal.) 

I also don't like the style of artwork very much as a concept for Narnia, but if this version had ever gone ahead, I would be intrigued to see it and to compare it with the Bill Melendez animation. I'm fond of the latter and I like it more every time I see it, because although the quality of the animation isn't very high, the production has its heart in the right place and it's very faithful to the original book, with only a few minor changes that don't affect the overall story very much (like starting with Lucy leaping out of the wardrobe and then recalling her adventure in flashback, or the fact that they left out Father Christmas).

An animated film by one of the main artists of Looney Tunes etc. would no doubt have been a better quality production visually. But of course there are so many other factors that we'll never know. What would the voice acting have been like? Would the production have followed the original story closely, or would there have been a whole lot of changes? Would the Christian elements at the heart of the story have been left intact, as they were with the Melendez production, or would they have been edited out?

(Somewhere else on NarniaWeb, I think in one of the discussions about the possibility of a gender-swapped Aslan, somebody shared an interview with one of the head people from the 1979 animation (it may have been Bill Melendez himself) in which he related how there was pressure from some on the team to change the story — why not have the girls do something to the dead Aslan, like pouring an anointing oil on his body, in order to bring him back to life? But this guy understood the Christian significance of Aslan's death and resurrection, and insisted it had to be done exactly as the book tells it, and so it was.)

Again, we'll never know what might have been, but it's nice to know there was interest in making an animation of LWW well before the one that went ahead, and from someone involved with one of the biggest animation studios, too!

The same artist who made Bugs Bunny probably wouldn’t have worked so well with Narnia since the story is meant to be a serious thing, whereas Bugs Bunny was meant to be funny.  I always wondered how Rankin and Bass would have made Narnia were they given the opportunity.  I kind of liked their production of The Hobbit, and the criticism of that film doesn’t bother me too much. It wasn’t perfect, but it did look like something from Tolkien. If Rankin and Bass had made Narnia it would certainly have looked old fashioned like something from medieval times, which is something very close to what Lewis intended for the story.  I think it may have been better than the 1979 production, which looked too much like the 1970’s.

Posted by: @courtenay

An animated film by one of the main artists of Looney Tunes etc. would no doubt have been a better quality production visually.

Posted by: @narnian78

The same artist who made Bugs Bunny probably wouldn’t have worked so well with Narnia since the story is meant to be a serious thing, whereas Bugs Bunny was meant to be funny.

FWIW, I imagine the art would have been more like Jones's adaptations of How the Grinch Stole Christmas or The Jungle Book. Not that those would be good models for Narnia either. (Well, maybe, The Jungle Book would be.) 

Posted by: @courtenay

I'm wondering if the grumpy-faced guy on the left in the second picture — with bluish skin and a white beard and red hat — is meant to be the White Witch's dwarf, Father Christmas having a bad day

He looks like the same guy whose standing with the White Witch when she talks to the giant Aslan, thus I think it's meant to be the dwarf