If they need to begin casting a boy for the 2nd movie early, then it would seem likely that it is a demanding role that requires extra time to find the right child actor.  (My guess would be a boy who could play two characters with different personalities convincingly - i.e. possibly playing identical twins.)  The question I would have is which boy is playing Digory Kirke and which is playing Shasta & Corin?

I could see the boy with the Indian father being Digory as several people have pointed out the references in the Magician's Nephew to Digory's father being in India.  I find it intriguing to entertain the possibly that King Lune could look Indian.

Given that in the Narnian time line that C S Lewis gave to Walter Hooper (https://narnia.fandom.com/wiki/Narnian_timeline) the Calormenes are descended from the people of Archenland and the people of Archenland are descended from King Frank and Queen Helen, it would make sense for the same racial diversity to be present in all three kingdoms.  I thought this could be quite cool.

Obviously if this was the case, then the first two movies would be The Magician's Nephew, followed by The Horse and His Boy.  From there, I would guess they would release the other stories with the Pevensies, Eustace and Jill in order (Published order and Chronological order as it becomes the same thing at that point).

I'm not sure how exactly you'd do it, but I think it's likely we'll get multiple animated or episodic versions. My ideal release order would be to follow chronological order.

• MN (2026)
• LWW (2028)
• HHB* (2029)
• PC (2030)
• VDT* (2031)
• SC* (2032)
• LB (2034)

* denotes a series or animated movie

I haven't heard any suggestion that Netflix's Narnia series is going to be animated. All the indications are that Greta Gerwig's upcoming adaptation of MN will be live action, at least as far as the human characters are concerned (of course the animals, including Aslan himself, will be CGI). Otherwise they'd be looking for voice actors only, and certainly wouldn't have put out a specific casting call for an Anglo-Indian boy (whether that's intended to be Digory or some totally new character).

I could see the Horse and His Boy being animated even if the rest of the series was live action for a few reasons:

1. The characters we know are different ages to what they are in the rest of the series (admittedly Peter's reference to the planting of the orchard in Cair Paravel just before the ambassadors from Calormen arrived in Prince Caspian and Susan's comment about the moles just starting to plant an orchard before the ambassador's arrived in the Horse and His Boy seem to imply that the Pevencies exited Narnia shortly after the events in The Horse and His Boy.  Matching the adult Pevensies from the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe would require filming to start soon after its completion of that movie - in parallel to Prince Caspian - which I can not see happening.)  Thus, there would be almost no re-use of existing actors for the production.

2. Almost none of the story takes place in Narnia. (Shasta's time in Narnia is limited to places we do not see in the other stories (aside from a distance view of the hill of the stone table.)  Unless Corin's description of arriving at Cair Paravel is depicted visually, not even Cair Paravel features in this story.  This would mean no locations are re-used and all sets for this movie would be one-offs.

3. Though fully animated movies are expensive, a live action production of The Horse and His Boy would require a huge amount of photorealistic CGI; Bree and Hwin feature throughout the entire run time of the story and need to give authentic, dramatic performances for the story to hold up.  It might be cheaper to make a fully animated movie than to undertake so much demanding VFX.

However, much depends on if the series is meant to be live or if it is going to be animated, instead.

I haven't heard any suggestion that Netflix's Narnia series is going to be animated. All the indications are that Greta Gerwig's upcoming adaptation of MN will be live action, at least as far as the human characters are concerned (of course the animals, including Aslan himself, will be CGI). Otherwise they'd be looking for voice actors only, and certainly wouldn't have put out a specific casting call for an Anglo-Indian boy (whether that's intended to be Digory or some totally new character).

And since the first film in the new franchise is obviously going to be live action, it wouldn't make sense to anticipate that any of the following films will be animated (as in 100% animated, not just the necessary CGI for talking animals etc.).

I can sort of imagine it happening if Netflix was the sort of independent "art house" kind of studio that might decide to hire a different auteur to direct each film and get each one to take a totally individual creative approach, putting his or her own unique stamp on it, as it were. But I really don't get the impression that's the way Netflix tends to do things. {ym}:wink:  

@courtenay   Regardless of when they do LWW, it needs to be followed hard on its heels by PC, VDT and SC within the next few years, because of the aging of the child characters. So as soon as they start on LWW, they're essentially locked into doing those four in that order in very quick succession, especially given the length of time it takes to produce each film (up to two years each, possibly longer).

However, much depends on if the series is meant to be live or if it is going to be animated, instead. Both BBC's television series in the 1980's early 1990's and the Walden series, starting with LWW in 2004, were done the way you suggest. The difficulty was that for one reason and the other, they took too long about the gaps between each film.

HHB could have been done almost concurrently, or perhaps overlapping with either LWW or PC, giving work to at least 3 of the adults playing the short bit at the end, as the adult Pevensies return in LWW back to being children in the Professor's home. It also has the advantage of being in a different location to that of either PC or LWW. There is only one truly Narnian scene in HHB, when Shasta has breakfast with 3 dwarfs, whilst Chervil the stag takes Shasta's message to Cair Paravel. 

Again, much depends on whether the series is meant to be live or if it is going to be animated. If it is live I agree with you but if animated, HHB should be seriously locked in, in my view.

And although LWW has to be done next, regardless of how often it has been filmed already, if the time lapse is so important, that would be one time to do it. 

So, my 1st order would be:

1. Magician's Nephew (because it is already being made)

2. LWW

3. HHB 

4. PC

5. VDT

6. SC

7. LB.

Or, my 2nd order would have to be

1. Magician's Nephew ( again, because it is already being made)

2. LWW

3. PC

4. VDT

5. HHB (to explain the song Eustace & Jill heard at Cair Paravel in SC about HHB)

6. SC (though I realise it leaves an inconvenient gap between VDT & LB, it also keeps separate Jill & Eustace from Lucy and Edmund's other adventures in Narnia). 

7. LB, which makes more sense as the last film of them all, when it ties all of the books together. 

LB has Jill and Eustace again (as per SC) plus three of the Pevensies — all four if, as is likely, they'll show Susan and expand a bit on how and why she rejected Narnia — but canonically, it's set about 7 years (in our world) after the events of SC, so there's less of a rush to make that one.

So the gap between SC and LB would be a better place, from a director's perspective, to do HHB, rather than cramming it in after LWW while still needing to get PC done before the child actors playing the Pevensies start looking too noticeably older than the one year they're supposed to have aged since they came back from Narnia the previous time.

HHB needs adult versions of Susan, Edmund and Lucy (and perhaps they could give adult Peter a cameo too, which the book doesn't!), but they can easily use the same actors they'll have used near the end of LWW, when we see the adult Kings and Queens on their hunt for the White Stag. Even if there are several years between the filming of LWW and HHB (because they're having to make PC, VDT and SC in the meantime), that time gap doesn't make anywhere near as great a difference for actors who are already grown up, as it does for child actors who are approaching puberty or already going through it, of course.

That's what I reckon makes most sense from a practical standpoint, anyway. But it'll be interesting to see what they do.

If Greta Gerwig's MN is successful, I actually wouldn't be surprised if her second Narnia film (she's only been commissioned to do two so far) turns out to be HHB, just to do something a bit different once again. It'd be a bold move, but it really could work, since the plot of HHB doesn't absolutely depend on us knowing who these Kings and Queens of Narnia are. The majority of viewers will be familiar with LWW though, at least from the previous adaptations, even if they haven't read the books, so that'd be an exciting surprise for those who knew about the Pevensies but didn't know this story! And then that would give the film-makers that much more time to get ready for the marathon that is LWW - PC - VDT - SC. But this is still all just speculation. 

So I guess we’ll wait and see after MN where they’ll go from there.