The October issue of Empire Magazine which came out today (yes, we are barely two days into September and they are releasing the October issue) has a pretty lengthy article on Voyage of the Dawn Treader in it. The article doesn't contain much in the way of spoilers or new information - it is mostly a recap on the journey that the movie itself has made on the way to the big screen - but it does contain a couple of interesting new quotes from Michael Apted and Mark Johnson, though mostly the sort of hollow soundbites about "Battles" and "Action" that will make you groan and wish they'd never said them. But still, its an interesting read none the less:

"ALL AT SEA" - How the latest Narnia movie battled Mexican drug lords, freak storms and a studio switch to keep the franchise afloat.

By Olly Richards.

"Oh god," groans Michael Apted, his voice caught at the stress point between sigh, laugh and yawn. Empire is talking to him during the final leg of a post-production marathon on his latest project, one that has devoured more than three years of his life and seen him trek innumerable miles around the world. "You name it, we endured it: collapsing economies, studio changes, Mexican drug wars..." Narnia, it seems has just gone bad ass.

A year previously, Empire is standing on the set of Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, the third in the C.S. Lewis fantasy franchise. We're aboard a great, lurching pretend ship, stuck to an otherwise unremarkable stip of beach just outside Brisbane, talking to a man in furry ears and bright-green leggings about the absolute b****r of cleaning his car this morning. after it had been assaulted the previous night by one of the hugest sandstorms in Australia's history. As one does. (He was a faun and someone would draw his goaty legs in later, in case you were wondering.) Though the weather may be having a dramatic little huff, spirits are high, the director and his youthful cast are laughing, and everyone seems very happy to be here - largely because they very nearly weren't.

"The producer called me up on Christmas Eve 2008 and just told me, 'Don't worry'" says Ben Barnes, aka Caspian X, king of Narnia and captain of the good ship Dawn Treader, screwing up his unreasonably good-looking face. "To which my response was, 'Okay... Do you mind if I do? Just a bit?" Barnes had reason to be a bit blue that Christmas. And he was far from the only one.

Everyone involved in the Narnia franchise had got coal in their stocking that year. After two movies - The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe and Prince Caspian (in which Barnes joined the franchise) - Disney had decided it would not be bankrolling any more adventures for Aslan, the Pevensie children and all their weird, scurrying friends, and locked the door to the wardrobe indefinitely. The numbers were not stacking up. While the first film had amassed a huge $745 milion worldwide, Caspian's takings were a far less plump $420 million. You'd imagine that most studios would be whooping over such a haul, but when you're looking for the next Harry Potter, you don't want to be doing Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel numbers. It was time, the Mouse decided, to part ways with the Lion.

The decision stunned everyone, not least because Dawn Treader is widely regarded as the best of the books; at least, the most cinematic. The follow-up to Prince Caspian welcomes only Lucy and Edmund Pevensie (Georgie Henley and Skandar Keynes) back to Narnia, returning three Narnian years later with their irritating cousin Eustace (Son Of Rambow's Will Poulter) after they're sucked into a watery painting and thrust aboard the Dawn Treader as it embarks on a mission to save the seven banished Lords Of Narnia. There are sword fights, mystical lands, bizarre creatures and lashing storms at every turn.

"It definitely shook us," remembers producer Mark Johnson of the moment the series seemed to have breathed its last. "You wonder, 'Is anyone going to want us. Will we find the right place?' It was certainally a blow."

For Apted, the film being dropped by Disney was just the latest in a particuarly bleak pre-production process. Hired in 2007 to replace Andrew Adamson, who'd directed the first two Chronicles (and who retains a producing credit here), and prepare the film for a 2009 release date, the veteran Brit director first had to contend with Disney almost immediatley kicking the release date back to 2010, not to mention finding ways to bring in bigger profits with a lower budget. "After Caspian had opened and they decided to re-evaluate the franchise somewhat, they decided to make it more studio-based and not location-based," he explains. "The ideal place to shoot that is in a big studio with a big tank, and there was a perfect one in Rosarito, Mexico. Unfortunately, as well as big water tanks, Rosarito at the time also boasted something less conducive to movie-making: a drug war between police and local ne'er-do-wells.

"We'd moved out there and production started. But you'd see the police force appear, and the militia appear. Suddenly there'd be gun encampments outside the studio and stories of murder in Tijuana. We'd have had to go to work in armoured cars and live in armed compounds - and here we were making a family film! This didn't seem like a particuarly good idea..."

A European version of the fim was scouted and deemed way too expensive. A New Zealand and Australia shoot was calculated - also a bit on the costly side. Abruptly in early 2009, Disney decided it had had enough. And then the writers' strike hit. "People were panicking," says Apted, who was then head of the Directors Guild. "We weren't the only only people having trouble; the whole Hollywood industry was in total disarray." Fortunately, though, a more optimistic studio then stepped in to put the Dawn Treader back on course.

Narnia is now a 20th Century Fox joint. The franchise-collecting studio snapped up the rights to (potentially) adapt the four other entries in C.S. Lewis' book series shortly after Disney called it quits; Fox had actually shown interest in the rights earlier in the long process to getting The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe in front of cameras. Whilst it's possible it may have just spent an awful lot of money on someone else's old broken toy, there is a school of thought that the studio has nabbed itself a bit of a bargain because, in the book series, Voyage Of The Dawn Treader is where the story hits its stride and becomes less about precocious children being agog at talking, slightly camp mice, and more about adventure and dragons and killing big sea monsters. Which is clearly much more interesting.

"[Looking back on Caspian's lower box office] you can't say it wasn't sold right or we picked the wrong release day. You have to look within the movie itself," says Johnson when asked about the long-term viability of a series currently on a downward box-office trajectory. "I think it was probably the book Prince Caspian. It's less about the Narnian creatures and more about this sort of Shakespearean story about Caspian trying to find out who killed his father. This book is a great adventure. It's lots of islands where they just keep getting attacked!"

"This is really a completely different thing to the last two films," adds Apted. "We don't go to Narnia, we're creating a whole new world... I think it is a little more grown up. We've certainly got some huge impressive scenes. There's a very big sea battle."

Which meant a big shoot on water, obviously? No. "I went to speak to every director who's ever shot on water - Peter Wier, Gore Verbinski - and they all said the same thing: 'Don't,'" says Apted as we stand next to his full-sized ship, which sits not on the ocean but on a huge hydraulic gimble next to the ocean, to create the illusion of being on water without any of the complications. "We'll im not daft."

The sea-monster sequence apparently pushes the fake ship to its limits, pitching it hither and yon as the now not-so-young Edmund gets his chance to become the franchise's new hero, slashing at baddies in a manner previously reserved for his older brother. "This is Edmund stepping to the fore," says Keynes, who's a bit taller and more bulked up than his previous sulkier appearences. "It has been strange sometimes that it's just Georgie and I, without William (Mosely, as Peter) and Anna (Popplewell, as Susan), but the sword stuff is a lot of fun."

The Dawn Treader that arrives in Cinemas in December won't be the version originally planned. In the three years since Apted first came on board, the film has been through countless re-writes, travelled to more locations than even the story's fantastical voyage can manage, and found a whole new home.

"Would I do it again?" Apted Laughs out loud, for the first time in our interview. "It's a bit too early to answer that. I certainly had no idea what i was letting myself in for and there have been some real testing time, but i think it's made the film better. Would I do it again? Would I do it again? Never say never."

As Fox tentatively moves towards making the next in the series, The Silver Chair (the one with all the giants, and no Pevensies), Mark Johnson is, at least, confidently looking onward to new horizons. "We got there in the end. We've got a new home. Look, I'm still close with many people at Disney and I firmly believe they wish us well." He pauses, adjusts his glasses and gives a hint of a giggle. "We'll maybe not that well."

Here is a photo of the first double page spread of the article from the Empire Website. The article covers 4 pages in total. Aside from the inset picture there of Caspian, Edmund and Lucy which was released a few days ago, all the other photos in the article are taken from the trailer. (There is though some new "Photo Shoot" type photos of Barnes and Apted taken during the recent MovieCon III event which are featured in their MovieCon III behind-the-scenes article, if you are interested in such things)

I seem to recall that Empire previously used the phrase "All At Sea" in relation to VDT, and a lot of people were confused as to what they meant - so it's probably worth pointing out again that "All At Sea" is a common English saying, meaning to be in a state of "confusion and disorder" - which just about sums up much of the tumultuous pre-production phase on VDT very nicely.