I did have a copy of Boxen once, but never got around to reading it and ended up jettisoning it during either a move or a major clean-out!

Lewis himself didn't speak very highly of his Boxen stories in later years — here's a quote from NarniaWeb's news item about this proposed animated version:

Although it’s easy to draw comparisons between Boxen and his later writings, Lewis insisted that it and Narnia were two very different places “except the anthropomorphic beasts. Animal-Land, by its whole quality, excluded the least hint of wonder… there was no poetry, even no romance, in it.” 

Going by the little I know from flicking through the book when I had it, and from the comments in the few Lewis biographies I've read, the Boxen stories seem to have had a lot to do with young Jack overhearing the kinds of things grown-ups talk about — politics and society and being part of the "in" group and so on — and imitating it in his own stories by having anthropomorphic animal characters talking about and doing many of the same things. However, I'm also aware that one of the characters he created was a warrior mouse called Sir Peter Mouse, who led his forces to conquer Cat-Land... which definitely sounds like a precursor of Reepicheep and his friends!

I'm guessing that any animated adaptation of these stories will be only loosely based on what Lewis wrote, since the source material is virtually unknown to the public and it sounds like it doesn't have a huge amount of potential in its original form. It'll give the producers a mostly blank slate to work on, along with the excitement and intrigue of introducing audiences to something they haven't seen before but that is associated with a name everyone knows.

Posted by: @fantasia

My husband and I often have a discussion that the potential for the best movies seems to be in mediocre stories that have a really good plot/idea, but aren't the best written and don't have a huge following. Then the movie makers can really improve on it without irritating a fan base or taking away from an author's amazing work. 

Definitely agree with this, especially about not irritating the fan base, since there clearly isn't one for this particular work! I'll also be very interested to see what happens with this venture.

Posted by: @courtenay

Definitely agree with this, especially about not irritating the fan base, since there clearly isn't one for this particular work!

There is a way that something about Boxen's adaptation could irritate the fan base. That would be in a situation where the creators created something that seemed anti-Christian to some Lewis fans. Maybe they would decide to include modern ideas or political viewpoints that some/many Lewis fans disagree with. 

So hopefully the writers have the right mind about them, to play it safe , make a British Wind in the Willows-style tone, and perhaps make it "Narnia-lite" which would please Narnia fans who, to be honest, would be the core existing fan base for a Boxen series.

Posted by: @jonathan-paravel

Posted by: @courtenay

Definitely agree with this, especially about not irritating the fan base, since there clearly isn't one for this particular work!

There is a way that something about Boxen's adaptation could irritate the fan base. That would be in a situation where the creators created something that seemed anti-Christian to some Lewis fans. Maybe they would decide to include modern ideas or political viewpoints that some/many Lewis fans disagree with. 

So hopefully the writers have the right mind about them, to play it safe , make a British Wind in the Willows-style tone, and perhaps make it "Narnia-lite" which would please Narnia fans who, to be honest, would be the core existing fan base for a Boxen series.

Yes, very true. I guess we'll just have to see what happens, if it does happen...

On another note, I wonder what the animation style will be like? Lewis's own childhood drawings of his Boxen characters are quite cute and certainly good for an 8-year-old (you can see some of them at the top of NarniaWeb's news announcement about the series), but probably the animators will want to go for something a bit more sophisticated. It'd be lovely if they could make it look hand-drawn, though, even if it's digitally produced, just to give it a traditional look and feel. I'm thinking of the huge difference between the animated version of Beatrix Potter's tales produced in the early 1990s — all hand-drawn and based directly on her own illustrations — and the modern versions produced for both film and TV, which are all computer animated and are almost NOTHING LIKE what Beatrix actually created. 

(Now there was a case of angering the fan base, not only with the style of the animation but with totally losing the spirit of the originals. I remember there was a huge controversy with the first Peter Rabbit film when it turned out that part of the plot involved the animal characters shooting blackberries at a guy who's allergic to blackberries. The big outrage was — understandably — from parents of children with severe allergies who didn't want kids to get the idea that this kind of behaviour is OK and funny when it could actually threaten someone's life. But there were also actual fans of Beatrix Potter, like me, who were just appalled at something so utterly different from her own work being passed off as "Peter Rabbit" in the first place!!   )

I have seen copies of Boxen although I haven’t yet read it. It doesn’t bother me if a movie is made of it, but I think it is more essential to make the Narnia series for the screen. It would probably look much The Wind in the Willows, which has been adapted quite successfully for television. I think Lewis was better at representing animals with realism in Narnia than in Kenneth Graham’s book. But it doesn’t seem like a bad idea to make Boxen into a film if it is done carefully and in good taste. It may attract children to read the book and possibly develop an interest in Narnia. 

I actually remember Douglas Gresham mentioning Boxen during the prologue in the one of the Focus on the Family Radio Theater adaptions of The Magician's Nephew (I think).

An animated series of Boxen should be interesting! Though I have a gut feeling that anything could happen! It would be nice if it was 2D animation style, which we don't really see anymore. Oh, nothing against CGI animation, but there's been so many of them, you get tired of it so fast.

So I would be interested on what company might do with animated series of Boxen.

I just wondered where the name Boxen came from.  Was it a place that Lewis had visited as a child?  I don't know if they should give a movie or television series that name since it is not as appealing as Narnia.  Of course Narnia became part of the name of the series rather than being used in the titles of the individual books.  Although Boxen was published as a book, it may be out of print now since it is hard to find a copy at a reasonable price. That may be because the title is not so appealing as Narnia especially if people are unfamiliar with Lewis.  I think it is better to have an attractive title if you want people to read a book or watch a film.   🙂

Posted by: @narnian78

I just wondered where the name Boxen came from.  Was it a place that Lewis had visited as a child?

I really don't know, and I don't know if the collected stories themselves (which I haven't read) give us any details... all I know, from the various biographies and commentaries, is that when the two young Lewis brothers started out writing their own stories, Jack's were set in what he originally called Animal-Land and Warnie's were set in a fictionalised version of India, and over a few years the two boys started to combine their stories into one world and they called it Boxen. But I've never come across a reason why they chose that name! There's no place called Boxen anywhere in the world, according to Google Maps at least, so I don't think it could be a name of anywhere the boys visited or found on a map. (Unlike Narnia, which is actually the medieval name of a small town in central Italy, now called Narni — Jack found it on the map of ancient Italy in a classical atlas while he was studying with Professor Kirkpatrick (the main inspiration for Digory Kirke), and underlined the name "simply because he liked the sound of it", as he later told Roger Lancelyn Green!)

I have ordered a copy of Boxen, and I was able to get it at a reasonable price so apparently the book is still in print.  It was easier to find a copy than I thought.  I think I saw it years ago in a book store, but I didn't buy it then, which I have somewhat regretted. I think there is an introduction and a guide to the stories in it by Walter Hooper.  It definitely looks like it will be worth reading for its significance in the life of C. S. Lewis.  🙂

I'll be honest, I had no idea that there even was a published version of Boxen out there. I remember hearing about it in some C.S. Lewis biographies and the like (and, as Jasmine mentioned earlier, I think it's brought up in one of the FotF audio drama intros), but it didn't even occur to me that he might've written any of those stories down.

The idea of a Boxen animated series intrigues me, mostly because it just otherwise seems so out of the blue. For someone to want to adapt something so obscure that not even Lewis/Narnia fans are familiar with it, my natural assumption is that they must see something really special and have some burning desire to adapt it. (Alternatively, they might just be really desperate for ideas, and/or something to adapt, but that wasn't my first assumption.)

I am also curious about whether the series would be more interested in leaning into the idea that this story was written by children. I've seen a couple of stories that try to emulate the kinds of stories children tell, but usually they tend to get very silly. I know for a fact that some of the stories I came up with as a kid were intended to be taken seriously (even if I didn't have the talent to pull it off). I would be really fascinated to see someone try to take a child's story seriously, even if they might have to patch a few holes or the like.

Posted by: @rya

I'll be honest, I had no idea that there even was a published version of Boxen out there. I remember hearing about it in some C.S. Lewis biographies and the like (and, as Jasmine mentioned earlier, I think it's brought up in one of the FotF audio drama intros), but it didn't even occur to me that he might've written any of those stories down.

The idea of a Boxen animated series intrigues me, mostly because it just otherwise seems so out of the blue. For someone to want to adapt something so obscure that not even Lewis/Narnia fans are familiar with it, my natural assumption is that they must see something really special and have some burning desire to adapt it. (Alternatively, they might just be really desperate for ideas, and/or something to adapt, but that wasn't my first assumption.)

I am also curious about whether the series would be more interested in leaning into the idea that this story was written by children. I've seen a couple of stories that try to emulate the kinds of stories children tell, but usually they tend to get very silly. I know for a fact that some of the stories I came up with as a kid were intended to be taken seriously (even if I didn't have the talent to pull it off). I would be really fascinated to see someone try to take a child's story seriously, even if they might have to patch a few holes or the like.

Same. I had heard about it and knew roughly what it was, but I guess I wasn't aware that it had ever been published or could be read. 

I read it 20 years ago in a library. It was an older child's view of adult life of the day - social and political activity -  with line-drawings of some of the characters. It would be a very niche market, and I can't see it being worth the cost of production. People who watched it or bought it thinking it was like Narnia would be disappointed. 

I hadn't heard about it before the recent article on NarniaWeb. Sounds interesting enough to maybe take a look at it further. I don't know how much of an adaptation it requires as it seems to have been mainly a story idea written when he was a child. Is that worth an adapted story, even if it is by C.S. Lewis? I just can't add more than that at this stage! 🙂

The paperback edition of Boxen was published in 2010 by Harper-Collins.  The edition I have is the complete collected stories. It has black and white illustrations, but I am not sure who drew them.  I liked the stories, but they do not have the depth of Narnia.  They were something like The Wind in the Willows, which was the book that probably inspired them. Lewis certainly enjoyed stories with talking animals. The book is available from Amazon and eBay if you are interested in purchasing it . The price is now over 40 dollars, which is about twice as much as I paid for it. I am assuming the book is out of print.  It may be too expensive unless you want it very badly. 🙁

The value of Boxen for an upstart like Chalkdust Animation Studios, is that they almost have complete creative freedom (given the lack of source material or existing fan-base) but they're also able to attach C.S. Lewis's name to to the project. This could be a flagship series for them, with little downside.

In June, producers announced that they have already acquired funding but are waiting to team up with a distributor. Given Netflix's investment in Lewis and that Jared Mass' (executive producer) has history with the company, does anyone want to bet Netflix gets involved?

@narnian78 : The paperback edition of Boxen was published in 2010 by Harper-Collins.The book is available from Amazon and eBay if you are interested in purchasing it . The price is now over 40 dollars, which is about twice as much as I paid for it. I am assuming the book is out of print. It may be too expensive unless you want it very badly. 🙁

The one positive about adaptations is that new editions (of all Lewis' works) are inevitably released given the fanfare and renewed interest. If this project is released, I anticipate picking up a tie-in edition of the Boxen stories so I'll wait to buy a copy.