Narration is interesting, though I'm not sure if it would work for a series or film.

For SC, it could start in Narnia with the backstory of Rilian's disappearances. Then they cut to Eustace and Jill at school.

I guess for LB, it could start in Narnia as well. Though opening credits might be kind of tricky. Maybe Tirian and Jewel at Cair Paravel.

@narnian78 from what I see on the video the music score reminds me a bit of the Sarah Collins theme from dark shadows, the instrumentation anyways,  which had narration in the begining of every episode. Lol 

So here are some random ideas for the opening credits for each Narnia movie-

MN- a shot of Victorian London. The camera pans across Victorian London as the opening credits are going.

LWW- As @narnian78 pointed out, it could open with rural England and woods at the Professor's house. We could see a glimpse of the train, and the Pevensies looking out.

HHB- Perhaps with baby Shasta and a soldier in a boat on the water.

PC- Maybe with Caspian's backstory, with the nurse telling Caspian the story of the old days.

VDT- Caspian and his crew setting sail. We could see a shot of the Dawn Treader on the water as the opening credits are going.

SC- Maybe with Rilian's backstory then cut to Eustace and Jill at school.

LB- Maybe with Tirian as a boy, learning about Narnia's past from a tutor. The opening credits could possibly go where he and Jewel are at Cair Paravel.

Interesting ideas here, but one thing that stands out about most of the actual books is that — except for HHB and LB — they all begin firmly in this world, with the child characters through whose eyes we see most of the story. That includes PC, VDT and SC. We don't get any hints or spoilers for what is happening in Narnia, or what has happened previously as the lead-up to this story, before we're actually in Narnia. I reckon that was a deliberate stylistic choice by Lewis, to draw us as readers into the story along with its main this-worldly characters, so we experience Narnia along with them and learn the background to the adventure as they do, without any spoilers beforehand.

Of course, that leads to lengthy flashbacks in both PC and SC (and a shorter one in VDT where they hear about why Caspian and his crew set out and where they've been so far, but that's not as relevant to the upcoming story), which may not work as well in the context of a film as they do in a written narrative. It's going to come down to the choices of the individual director and script writers and so on, as to what makes for the best structure for a film. But it does stand out to me that in nearly every case, Lewis focuses first and foremost on the characters from our world and their journey, not on "the story so far" in Narnia itself.

The first exception to this is HHB, which of course is the only one of the Chronicles that doesn't involve characters travelling from this world into another — but even then, the action starts with Shasta and mainly follows him as his quest of discovery goes on. I can imagine that film starting with a sequence of the boat floating in to shore at night, a shadowy figure (Arsheesh) coming down and finding the dead man in the boat and then hearing the baby cry, and he picks up the baby, awkwardly trying to shush him (Arsheesh is not a very fatherly figure, we find out early on!) — and then maybe, as the camera zooms out for a wider shot of the seashore, we see the silhouette of a lion watching and then disappearing into the woods. Then cut to pretty much where the book begins, with Shasta as a boy constantly at work for his rather harsh and indifferent "father" who won't answer any of his questions as to what lies beyond the horizon, etc. I can see that working well, as it creates an air of mystery without giving away too much of the story. (We learn within the first chapter that Shasta is a foundling, so it's no spoiler to show something of how it happened. Perhaps putting Aslan in there gives too much away, though, because anyone who's familiar with Narnia will quickly guess that this isn't an ordinary dumb lion.)

And the other exception is LB. I can't really imagine that story starting with anything other than where it does — Shift and Puzzle finding the lion skin in Caldron Pool and Shift having his brilliant idea for what to do with it. That really sets us up for the whole story. Here are two Talking Beasts, one of whom has extremely nasty and selfish tendencies — and is constantly manipulating his poor, simple-minded, good-hearted donkey friend to do whatever he (the Ape) wants — and now he's just hit on a plan to fool all the Narnians with a fake Aslan. I remember that chilling me to the guts when I first read this book, because it's so sinister and so unlike how the vast majority of Narnians we've seen before — especially the Talking Beasts — normally think and act. And it's crucial to what happens in the rest of the story, and to our understanding of it, that we know this "Aslan" is an imposter from the start, but Tirian at first doesn't. That book really builds up the tension bit by horrible bit, and to me it's crucial that it starts with Shift's deception and what grows from it. Otherwise, really, where are you going to put him and Puzzle into the narrative, if it starts with the focus on Tirian (who is the main character for virtually the remainder of the story)? Shift and Puzzle and the lion skin, as far as I can see, work perfectly as the disquieting prelude before the main story starts.

However the opening credits end up being done, I do think it's vital that the director is someone who is deeply familiar with each book and how the plot of each one is structured — and then, if any changes do need to be made for good cinematic story-telling, hopefully they'll be ones that still make sense story-wise and aren't just done to make it look more exciting on screen.

@courtenay 

Well, MN couldn't start in Narnia anyways, given that it's a newly created world, and that doesn't happen until midpoint of the book.

If LWW starts with rural England, it would be a unique way to start. In the previous adaptations, it started with the Pevensies on the train.

Flashbacks are kind of tricky to do on film. If they have to do any, I guess they would have to do it for the battle of Charn in MN (or even just have Jadis telling of it, and we hear the noise of it in the background). Even in LB, as Tirian is tied up to a tree, there could be a flashback of how he was a boy, a tutor taught him about what had happened in Narnia's past.

I've always got the impression that the first chapter of LB was more like a prologue. I could see where it would be hard to place an opening credits in. I guess the camera could pan across the River Narnia and the Great Waterfall as the opening credits are going. I've thought the same for Victorian London at the start of MN.

Whilst i'm not necessarily averse to the idea of an opening credits sequence in any of the new Narnia adaptations, and indeed, I can think of several movies where the opening credits sequence is my single favourite part of the entire film ("X-Men Origins Wolverine" and Zach Snyder's "Watchmen" both spring to mind) I'm not entirely sure a long title sequence is actually necessary for a Narnia film.

Part of that is because dynamic opening title sequences (as opposed to static title cards) such as those seen in the Walden movies, or either of the two aforementioned films above, are often used to establish an initial sense of energy and drive the momentum of the storytelling set-up. As we've discussed though in other topics, the WW2 set-up for LWW is not actually all that relevant to the narrative of the story, and most of the Narnia books tend to follow a pretty similar format - that is, that the children are in a location which is dull and uninteresting (a dusty old manor house, a train station on their way back to school, the shabby spare room of their aunt and uncle, etc) before being whisked away to go on a much more exciting adventure in the more interesting location of Narnia. Therefore things like the Blitz, and even the Train Journey, all feel a bit too exciting to really sell that starting premise of "dull and uninteresting".

Therefore, looking at the films in terms of the opening shot, I'd like to make two pitches for the opening shot of a LWW adaptation:

My first idea would be to open on a lingering shot of Lucy looking out of the rainy window at the Professor's house, similar to the one in Walden's LWW. I think this would be a good way to establish that sense of the real-world being "dull and uninteresting" whilst also putting the focus firmly on Lucy who is (I think at least) the primary character of LWW (and certainly the one who I expect Greta Gerwig to relate to the most).

I would definitely draw out this shot much longer than Walden does (10 to 20 seconds even), to really focus on Lucy's overall sense of loneliness and isolation, and I would probably spend a bit more time overall with the children being bored in the big old dusty house than the Walden film does, but for me, this would be the key emotional grounding for LWW, and its where I would rather Gerwig's adaptation would focus its early efforts on (rather than an elaborate Blitz sequence).

My second suggestion would be to open with a shot of the Silver Apple on the professor's desk - again similar to one that appears in the Walden film. I think this would be an interesting way to tell the opening portion of LWW... but only if they are doing it as the second film.

Not only would it be a slightly different and unexpected way to open the film, essentially introducing us to the children from Digory's perspective arriving at his house (which is after all also Lewis's perspective from a semi-autobiographical sense) but it could also be used to establish some initial connective tissue back to MN (with the engravings of MN's story on the apple) and maybe also connect to a wider theme of childhood, and growing-up into adulthood, that exists across all the stories.

In either case, a slightly more thoughtful and slower-paced opening is the way I would go.

@icarus, I agree there's no reason a Narnia movie needs an opening credits sequence. However, if whoever directs really wants one, it wouldn't have to give the movie unnecessary energy. Sometimes credits scene can be downright dull. Using The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as an example, the credits could just accompany a montage of all the rooms in the professor's manor and all the interesting items in them ending with the wardrobe room. Then a narrator could say, "This looks like the least exciting part of the house but it's not."

OK, maybe scrap the last part but as long as we're brainstorming, we might as well consider everything.  

There has to be something interesting to begin the film since what follows is the scene which introduces Mrs. MacReady to the Pevensies.  She is usually portrayed as a strict old maid type, which could be seen as humor (“The MacReady” as C. S. Lewis and the Pevensies called her).  But although she is essential to the story there should be something more interesting than her to attract people to the film. Scenes of the English countryside would work very well as they did in the Walden film.

I think a great opening sequence for The Magician's Nephew would be a pair of hands opening up a box which spills out some sparkling dust, then how the dust is forged and incorporated into the green and yellow rings. But the viewer never sees the hands' owner, though they see the workshop background. Then that fades out into a wide angle scene of Digory exploring the yard and meeting Polly. Some minutes later, when the two barge into the Professor's workshop, the viewer then meets Uncle Andrew who presents the rings.