I agree, 3 hours wouldn't hurt for most of the Narnia stories!

Do we know, though, if Netflix is intending to make them into movies as such, or into a series or mini-series with several episodes for each? That would allow them to develop each story more gradually and fit more in (and it has the advantage of being able to end each episode on a cliffhanger, so that everyone has to wait and see what happens next). I think I'd like that better than individual movies.

I’m a little TOO obsessed with this topic.
Great choice of topic, Cleander!

I haven’t a clue about Netflix Narnia until we know just what books they’ll adapt as movies. As I’ve said, I hope it’s the four books yet to see movie adaptations. Still...

The Walden and BBC takes on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a good place to start (Not specific).
Example: Walden’s “Where’s Edmund?!” scene in LWW occurs about 50 minutes into the 130-minute movie-adaptation of the book (10+ mins of end credits), but BBC’s “Where’s Edmund?!” scene in LWW occurs around 80 minutes into a 160-minute television adaptation of the book. In my own opinion, the former is too short and rushed, and the latter is too long and slow. Somewhere in between is preferable.

(Ever since I was in middle school I’ve scripted treatments of movie ideas that showed what their desired runtime would have been. I theorized that The Silver Chair and The Magician’s Nephew would benefit from shorter runtimes: 110 mins - 140 mins. The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle would benefit from longer runtimes: 140 mins - 170 mins. That is because HHB & LB introduce new cultures and/or characters that only appear in said stories, while SC & MN are continuations/prequels of previous stories with added characters and places.)

Prince Caspian was made into an action film so it should have been a shorter film, but The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was a cheesy film so it wasn’t short enough! Hopefully Netflix Narnia will be just right: Faithful but not to the point of being dull.
That’s my shfeel.

Two and a half hours is plenty enough for any movie. Lord of the Rings is probably the exception to the rule, but most movies that go on for 3 hours or more tend to be hideous bloated messes or tedious slogs to get through.

It's an advantage of Netflix's approach to creative control that they don't tend to impose many restrictions on their creators, but boy could they have done with telling Martin Scorsese to cut an hour out of the Irishman - its completely devoid of any of the pace or energy that made his other crime epics such a joy to watch.

I also don't feel that any of the Narnia books have complex enough narratives to warrant lengthy runtimes (at least as far as a feature film format is concerned). They generally follow one set of characters on one single story. There aren't really any subplots, side quests or concurrent narratives going on.

In terms of a TV format, I feel 8 to 10 episodes is a nice number. Again Netflix have not been ruthless enough with their creators in this regard, and some of the Marvel shows were a real slog to get through at 13 episodes long. I feel like they are starting to learn however, with alot of the major streaming providers now doing seasons of irregular numbers like 7 or 9 episodes - essentially whatever the story warrants, rather than trying to stretch or squash the story into a pre-determined episode count.

As a side note, you might be wondering why I feel 3 hours of movie is too long, but 8 hours of TV series is just right, and that's because the viewing experience is fundamentally altered by the nature of the format. With a TV series each episode is it's own discrete entity, with a begining, middle and end. Each episode can have it's own thematic focus or character focus, and as a viewer you generally get some degree of emotional pay-off or resolution by the end of the episode. In a feature film however, the three acts are stretched out over the entire run time, and therefore you end up waiting a long time to get satisfying resolutions to character arcs and plot points which can be incredibly frustrating and tedious if you are having to go for more than 3 hours.

I think Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers were each three hour movies and Return of the King was 4 hours (not counting the extended versions).

So how long should Netflix Narnia movies be? That's a good question. I'd say maybe an hour and half to 2 hour movie. Then of course, they could decide to make The Last Battle into a 2 and a half hour movie. But I think they should be at least an hour and half to 2 hour movie.

I believe 2-2.5 hours could work. 1979's animated version of LWW felt a bit rushed in my opinion due to of it being 90 minutes long. I can also see a series lasting 8-12 episodes long per book could work too. The radio dramas lasted about 3-3.5 hours long though I can see that being a bit too lengthy in the case of an actual film.

I wonder if it is possible for The Last Battle to be made into a two part movie: The Last Battle Part 1 and The Last Battle Part 2. I could see that if they want to expand on some things, they would probably make it into a two part movie.

If The Last Battle gets made into a two part movie, each of them could be a 2-2.5 hour movie.

I'm wondering why they would make The Last Battle into a two-part movie in the first place. It's not longer than any of the other books in the series (Prince Caspian is in fact the longest!), and while the plot can be divided into two parts more clearly than the rest of the Chronicles — the increasing despair and horror as Narnia comes to an end, and then the utter wonderment of discovering Aslan's country and the "new Narnia" or "real Narnia" — that wouldn't be a good basis for dividing it into two films. I'm guessing the only reason for speculating about that is that Warner Bros decided to split the final Harry Potter book into two films, which may have been partly because it was a long and unwieldy book (I'm pretty sure almost every book in that series is longer than the previous one!), but also, I suspect rather cynically, it was a good way of making more money.

The BBC did reasonable justice to LWW and SC in six half-hour episodes each, which comes to 3 hours total. 3 hours is a bit long for a children's film, but 2 - 2.5 hours might be good enough to tell the story without dragging it out too long. The Walden film of LWW ran to 143 minutes (according to Wikipedia), which is just under 2.5 hours, and while I didn't like the film itself, it was good to see that the writers didn't leave out anything essential from the book. (In fact, they added a few things, including that whole sub-plot with the fox, which I found distracting and unnecessary.) So it would probably be possible to fit most if not all of the other Narnia books into that kind of timeframe and still have a commercially successful movie.

I'd prefer overall for all the Narnia stories to be made into multi-episode series (maybe 6 to 8 parts each) rather than individual movies, just because that gives a lot more scope for pacing the plot well and building up suspense. Netflix originally hinted at both formats, but we don't know if that's what their plans still are, several years after the initial announcement, so we'll just have to wait and see.

@courtenay 

Right, and the same could be true for Mocking Jay in the Hunger Games series. I was just looking at the runtime for each of the movies from the Walden Franchise-

The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe- 143 minutes

Prince Caspian- 150 minutes

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader- 113 minutes

So Walden's Prince Caspian had the longest runtime and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader the shortest. I'm not sure how I would feel about The Last Battle being made into a two part movie. It's possible. Yet it could end up being 1 movie. It could even have the longest runtime, like Return of the King.

As far as the runtime for Netflix Narnia movies goes, I think it might depend on what the filmmakers will want to keep in, add or even cut out.

Turning a final saga into two movies may not be a thing anymore, as it wasn't before Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Mocking Jay in The Hunger Game Series. Peter Jackson didn't make The Return of the King into a two part movie, and that movie has the longest runtime in that franchise (hard to believe it's going to be about 20 years ago as of December 2023).

The same could happen with The Last Battle, having the longest runtime. I'm not sure which would have the shortest runtime. It's understandable that a movie may not be able to fit everything that are in the books. Then again, it might depend on what the filmmakers will want to keep in, decide to add some things, or even cut out.