Today's news story about Anna Popplewell being cast in an interactive movie got me thinking: what about interactive storytelling and The Chronicles of Narnia? Often creating a choose-your-own-adventure film experience, these types of films have been growing in popularity in recent years and have largely been championed by online streaming platforms.
While I don't know about choose-your-own-adventure being a good fit for Narnia ("To know what would have happened, child?") I am intrigued by the idea of perhaps choosing which narrative to follow. In Anna's upcoming project, the viewer chooses between a similar plot playing out with both a female and male protagonist in different eras. Being able to choose whether to follow from Shasta or Aravis's perspective in The Horse and His Boy, for instance, would be really neat, as long as they also had a linear version of the story available, too.
Topic starter
Posted : April 7, 2021 6:09 pm
coracle liked
I did post a few thoughts on the topic of Interactive Movies a year or so back, so I'll post the link to that below rather than repeating my thoughts here.
The only additional comment I would add in the time since however is that Interactive Content no longer seems to be at the top of Netflix's development strategy as it was at the end of 2018 when Bandersnatch came out. I don't think the format really took off with audiences in the way I think they hoped it would, therefore I would probably now assess it to be much less likely that Netflix would try and push Narnia towards the interactive format.
I would though highly recommend the Interactive Special of "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" on Netflix if people are interested in seeing the potential for the format. Much lke the regular series it's absolutely delightful, and the interactive element adds a lot of fun!
Posted : April 7, 2021 6:42 pm