MN seems to appeal to a smaller audience as well. It is very much a story that may appeal to smaller children, where the 2 main characters are small children, but older tween-teen audiences may not have any interest in a film where children are the protagonists

The children are not that young. The timeline has them aged 11 and 12 which could be moved up a little bit to 12-14 for the film.

The more I think about it, the more I feel tween (like in the timeline) might be the way to go. Tweens could be relatable to both kiddies and early teens. However, aging them up any higher than that, like the early teens that you suggested, would be a grave mistake. Their behavior is in many respects childlike. Also, there is a reason why Georgie Henley is the most popular of the Narnia kids. She's not the most talented, the most charismatic or the most attractive of the bunch, but she is the one that the little kids who fell in love with LWW could relate to the most.

Note: I'm not talking smack about Georgie, I'm just pointing out that, taken on their intrinsic merits, the other Narnia kids have just as much going for them.

I think all movies in this day and age make the child protagonists older in the film adaptations than they are in the original books. Percy Jackson, anyone? In the film, the one character has facial hair.

I think, not by choice, but by how long it took to make Prince Caspian after the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the filmmakers were forced to cast an older Caspian, to match the then older Peter.

And in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and older Eustace needed to be cast to fit in with the now older-aged Lucy and Edmund. Afterall, a Eustace who was supposed to be a year younger than Lucy (Georgie Henley was 15 for VDT filming) in the book would make him around 9 or so. A 9 year old Eustace would not look right in VDT compared to a 15 year old Lucy and 17 year old Edmund.

At the rate they are going, even if they make the Silver Chair next, they will need to cast a 17 year old Jill. If they make it after the Magician's Nephew, she will be closer to 20, to match Will Poulter's age.

I think the benefit of making the Magician's Nephew is that we can start fresh. Diggory and Polly's ages do not need to be ramped up to match that of any of the previous children, for they will not be seen together. I do think that 8 and 9 year old children will not lure in teenagers like my friends, so I think maybe very early teenagers, or even tweens, (11, 12, or 13) would be the best fit.

The story isn't just about Polly and Digory; it's also about Mabel, Uncle Andrew, Helen, Frank, and Aslan. If the movie can develop these characters, then I doubt anyone would mind Polly and Digory being younger.

Hm . . . Frank, Helen and Aslan don't show up until half way through though, Mabel isn't present for most of the middle of the story, and I don't think that developing a creepy old man character like Andrew will help the movie appeal to teens and young adults.

btw, I never got a clear sense of how old Frank and Helen are from the book, but I think they should be played by young adults.

I think, as always Aslan should have a large role, even if we don't see him for sometime. His presence as a character is important.

Hm . . . Frank, Helen and Aslan don't show up until half way through though, Mabel isn't present for most of the middle of the story, and I don't think that developing a creepy old man character like Andrew will help the movie appeal to teens and young adults.

btw, I never got a clear sense of how old Frank and Helen are from the book, but I think they should be played by young adults.

Uncle Andrew is the earthly villain of Magician's Nephew. Sorry we do need him to be developed to the point where we can understand his similarity to as well as his inferiority to Jadis. Uncle Andrew starts out just as evil and uncaring as Jadis will seem to be, but in a mean, limited way, without having 'the royal mark', or her big picture ideas of conquest. We need to see not only his manipulative behaviour for what it is, we also need to be able to laugh at his experiences with Jadis, and their outcome. I'd also love to see the chase he endures as well as his imprisonment inside the 'money' trees.

I'd say that Frank was in his late twenties or early thirties. Helen might have been a little bit younger. You have to remember that the voting age in UK was 21 then and not 18 as it is today, whilst Helen before WW1 would not have been able to vote at all. Furthermore, even if they could have married earlier, Frank would probably have come to London to get work that paid sufficiently well to allow him to marry his Helen.

I didn't say that they shouldn't develop Uncle Andrew, I was just saying that developing his character won't help the movie appeal to teen audiences.

Has anyone seen this article yet:

http://www.christianpost.com/news/narni ... air-49517/

Walden Media has confirmed to The Christian Post that the Narnia 4 movie will be "The Magician's Nephew," not "The Silver Chair" as originally speculated by many fans.

"We are starting to talk to Fox and talk to the C.S. Lewis estate now about the Magician's Nephew being our next film," said Michael Flaherty, co-founder and president of Walden Media, during a recent interview with The Christian Post.

"If we can all agree to move forward, then what we would do is find someone to write the script. So, it could still be a couple of years."

That isn't really that shocking, but it is nice to have some confirmation. I also expected it to be a couple of years for the movie. I am expecting the typical 2.5 years between Narnia films. I just wish the whole process had been planned better to get a Narnia film in Theaters Christmas 2011 before the Hobbit films dominate both the holiday seasons after that.

Oy, I wonder if doing Magician's Nephew is the foreboding of "one last crack at it"?! I mean, if this movie does well, will they attempt to make SC next? And, how will they deal with having a new actor for Eustace? Because, surely they will have to have a new actor for Eustace if they let two years pass in order to make a different film. So, what I'm saying, if anything, aren't they making it more complicated for themselves by making Magician's Nephew? Either that or, like I said, they truly believe this will be their last movie.

Has anyone seen this article yet:

http://www.christianpost.com/news/narni ... air-49517/

We all knew that making MN next was a 100% commercial decision, not a creative one. But I personally never expected one of the producers to actually admit that.

This is the most fundamental problem with the franchise overall. Walden likes the books, but not enough to take any kind of financial risk on them. They have to play it safe. It's too risky to make adapt a unique book into a unique film, so they have to change them to fit a generic formula. Walden lacks the backbone to do the films the way they should be done.

New Line Cinema believed in Peter Jackson's vision for The Lord of the Rings enough to take the biggest financial risk in the history of cinema: Making three films at once before knowing if the first one would do well.

The Narnia rights need to go to a studio that respects the books enough to take a risk on them. The legacy of Narnia is far bigger and will last far longer than any profit Walden or Fox makes.

I'm scratching my head at the math in that article.

"Prince Caspian sold a third of the books as Dawn Treader and did a third at the box office."

Caspian only did one third as well as VDT in the box office? What figures are they looking at?

Also if LWW sold twice as many books as PC and PC sold 1/3 as many books as VDT, doesn't that mean that VDT has sold a lot more copies than LWW?

♫New math, New-ew-ew math♫

I'm scratching my head at the math in that article.
[...]
Also if LWW sold twice as many books as PC and PC sold 1/3 as many books as VDT, doesn't that mean that VDT has sold a lot more copies than LWW?

I had the same thought, but I'm terrible at math so I decided to wait for someone else to point it out, haha.

Flaherty's comments make about as much sense as VDT's plot.

Yes, quite. I agree that the maths in that article do seem a bit wonky. With that sort of mathematical standard, backers like Walden would just waste money for nothing.

New Line Cinema believed in Peter Jackson's vision for The Lord of the Rings enough to take the biggest financial risk in the history of cinema: Making three films at once before knowing if the first one would do well.

Sir Peter Jackson did have a vision for LOTR, but he wasn't the first one to do so. Ralph Bakshi also had a vision for LOTR, which included intermixing animation with live action. But this didn't work so well, and he left his 1977 version unfinished when he died. But Jackson also built on Ralph Bakshi's version, acknowledging him both in the film and in the commentaries produced with Fellowship of the Ring. Sir Peter Jackson's version, which undoubtedly was ground-breaking, was scripted by Fran Walsh who is his wife, I think. And undoubtedly that helped.

Avatar was also groundbreaking when it pioneered the 3D effects seen on current films. James Cameron was also daring to do what he did so successfully with Titanic, a version of which was screened about 1956. As much as I would like to see a good script for MN, which is yet to be developed, and as much as I wish that Narnia could remain true to the written story as far as possible, especially in MN, I doubt that ignoring the profit motive would help.

Just doing an adaptation of a story like MN or even VDT isn't of itself going to be groundbreaking, unlike LOTR or Avatar, however good the adaptation it is. I agree that by doing 3 movies at once, Jackson, who, I see, has only just started filming the Hobbit, did save a lot of money by being able to reuse locations and film sets etc, such as the Rivendell one. The Hobbit, likewise is to be done in 2 parts, like HPDH. But it remains to be seen whether the Hobbit is going to be as successful as either the Harry Potter films or LOTR.

Now that the Harry Potter films are over, I wonder if Walden could grab hold of Steve Kloves..