If it was done in chronological order, perhaps we don't even know that the Professor is Digory until either the end of LWW or even the end of the HHB.

I've been wondering if it is possible to do LWW and HHB as a pair. They could move the scene with the Hunting of the White Stag and the Pevensies coming out of the wardrobe from the end of LWW to the end of HHB. It could even give the Pevensies more to do as well. In The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, they moved the scene with Shelob from The Two Towers to The Return of the King, perhaps to give Frodo and Sam more to do in the last film. So if LWW and HHB ends up being done as a pair (oh, not rush through it like the BBC did with PC and VDT), perhaps it could give the Pevensies more to do in HHB.

Posted by: @jasmine_tarkheena

They could move the scene with the Hunting of the White Stag and the Pevensies coming out of the wardrobe from the end of LWW to the end of HHB.

Yes @jasmine_tarkheena , I had thought this as well! It's a good idea, but I don't think they'll do it. I'm not convinced that they'll adapt HHB at all, but if they do, I recon it they'll save it for later in the series. Possibly a stand alone film released between VDT and SC? However, they could make some sort of reference to it earlier.

We'll see!

@whitestag 

Right. It may or may not happened. If it does, perhaps LWW could end on a cliffhanger, making the audiences wanting to come back for the next one. If it doesn't, HHB could still be third or it could even come second after LWW in publication order.

As I've mentioned before, there are things to keep in mind: LWW coming before HHB, MN, HHB, and SC coming before LB.

LWW introduces us to the Pevensies. Otherwise, audiences wouldn't know who they are in HHB.

MN will certainly have to be before LB. It wouldn't make sense to just have Polly showed up randomly with Digory. LB does make some references to MN- where Tirian and Jewel are at Lantern Waste (the book mentions, "A child from our world once planted the Tree of Protection"), and Tirian mentions to Eustace and Jill that Digory and Polly were the ones from the Dawn of the Time, when Aslan sang Narnia into existence.

SC is followed by LB in some aspect. Tirian mentions that he's seventh in descent from Rilian, so the family line keeps going until then. Perhaps a tutor (one similar to Doctor Cornelius in PC) could tell Tirian about Narnia's history, on whenever it was stirred up, and how it turned out all right. Plus, SC would certainly have to introduce us to Jill. It wouldn't make sense to have her just show up with Eustace.

HHB would obviously be our introduction to the Calormenes and their culture. Otherwise, if an LB movie introduce us to the Calormenes, audiences would be as surprised as Tirian and Jewel are when they see them at Lantern Waste. Though LB could make some references to HHB, perhaps Rishda going through Calormene history, revisiting on Rabadash's attempt on Archenland and Narnia.

So, as I've mentioned before, there things to keep in mind when it comes to the order of the new franchise.

Personally, i wouldn't want Lww or PC to receive new adaptations, i lke the ones that are there.

Regarding chronological order, my idea is this:

1. The Lion, The Witch and Wardrobe 

2. The Magician's Nephew 

3. The Horse And His Boy 

4. Prince Caspian 

5. The Dawn Treader

6. The Silver Chair

7. The Last Battle

Taking into account the existing adaptations (less DT), the ideal would be to continue with MN and then HHB. 

@giigipevensie 

In that order, you would still have a familiar story as the first one (LWW) but it would be followed by a prequel and a midquel instead. The way I see the publication order are LWW, PC, VDT, and SC as original stories, HHB as a midquel, MN as a prequel, and LB as a sequel.

You could even have LWW be first, and followed by HHB, and that be followed by MN. It would mix in the familiar the story with a midquel and it be followed by a prequel. LWW has been done so many times, so it would be nice to have HHB and MN, which has never been done before, into that mix. A way to do that is have LWW be first, and end that on a cliffhanger, followed by the HHB. Then it would be followed by MN, where we find out that the Professor is actually Digory Kirke, and audiences be like, "So that's where the wardrobe came from!"

PC, VDT, and SC are what I like to call "The Caspian Trilogy" since all these stories feature Caspian. PC is kind of a tricky one: the BBC TV series rushed through it and paired it with VDT, and even Walden Media had thought about skipping it. Well, I certainly wouldn't want Netflix or whichever company to rush through it or even skipping it. VDT is episodic, but if it ends up being a film, they better not making it about "We've got find seven swords to fight the Green Mist that wishes to steal light from this world!" I know Caspian has a brief appearance in SC, but where he is about to die without an heir is a major conflict in the story.

LB will certainly be a real challenge. Neither the BBC TV series nor the Walden Media Film Franchise could even get that far. Well, I think Netflix or whatever company has opportunity to do make it through all seven (hopefully). I think what will make LB a challenge to adapt to screen is that it's not your typical light hearted Narnia book... it's really dark and twisted. When I first read it as a 10 year, I didn't notice the darker themes as much. But when I re-read a few years back, my reaction was, "This is really dark and twisted, even for a children's book". I've even been wondering how a film or series will be able to pull this one off. Regardless of what order the new franchise will be, LB will certainly be the last one.

@rilianix I was wondering how they will work around the aging of the actors playing the Pevensies if they don’t shoot all their appearances back to back!  Did you hear how long it took Pippa Hall to cast the Walden Media films?  The casting brief called TLWW The Hundred Years Winter and Pippa called it The Hundred Years Casting.  She also had to see actors younger than they needed to be as she started casting well before filming began, it was a nightmare for all the UK children’s agents 🤣 my son was shortlisted for Edmund …… we were sooooo excited taking him to the recalls in South Kensington.

It will sure be interesting on what order they decide to do the new Narnia films in.

As I've mentioned before, LWW will certainly have to introduce us to the Pevensies. Otherwise, audiences wouldn't know who they are in HHB. HHB will certainly have to be before LB because it would certainly mess up with the introduction of the Calormenes and their culture. PC would also have to introduce us to the Telmarines as well before VDT.

So, as I've said before, there are a lot of things to keep in mind when it comes to the order of the new Narnia franchise.

So it looks like MN will be first in the new Narnia franchise. Now the question is, does this mean it’s going to be done chronologically or will they wait to do HHB between SC and LB? Well, regardless, LB will certainly have to be last. HHB (whether it’s done between LWW and PC or between SC and LB) will almost certainly have to introduce us to the Calormenes. If LB was done before HHB, it would certainly mess up with the introduction of the Calormenes.

So I guess we’ll wait and see after MN where they’ll go from there.

Regardless of when they do LWW, it needs to be followed hard on its heels by PC, VDT and SC within the next few years, because of the aging of the child characters. So as soon as they start on LWW, they're essentially locked into doing those four in that order in very quick succession, especially given the length of time it takes to produce each film (up to two years each, possibly longer).

LB has Jill and Eustace again (as per SC) plus three of the Pevensies — all four if, as is likely, they'll show Susan and expand a bit on how and why she rejected Narnia — but canonically, it's set about 7 years (in our world) after the events of SC, so there's less of a rush to make that one.

So the gap between SC and LB would be a better place, from a director's perspective, to do HHB, rather than cramming it in after LWW while still needing to get PC done before the child actors playing the Pevensies start looking too noticeably older than the one year they're supposed to have aged since they came back from Narnia the previous time.

HHB needs adult versions of Susan, Edmund and Lucy (and perhaps they could give adult Peter a cameo too, which the book doesn't!), but they can easily use the same actors they'll have used near the end of LWW, when we see the adult Kings and Queens on their hunt for the White Stag. Even if there are several years between the filming of LWW and HHB (because they're having to make PC, VDT and SC in the meantime), that time gap doesn't make anywhere near as great a difference for actors who are already grown up, as it does for child actors who are approaching puberty or already going through it, of course.

That's what I reckon makes most sense from a practical standpoint, anyway. But it'll be interesting to see what they do.

If Greta Gerwig's MN is successful, I actually wouldn't be surprised if her second Narnia film (she's only been commissioned to do two so far) turns out to be HHB, just to do something a bit different once again. It'd be a bold move, but it really could work, since the plot of HHB doesn't absolutely depend on us knowing who these Kings and Queens of Narnia are. The majority of viewers will be familiar with LWW though, at least from the previous adaptations, even if they haven't read the books, so that'd be an exciting surprise for those who knew about the Pevensies but didn't know this story! And then that would give the film-makers that much more time to get ready for the marathon that is LWW - PC - VDT - SC. But this is still all just speculation. 

@courtenay   Regardless of when they do LWW, it needs to be followed hard on its heels by PC, VDT and SC within the next few years, because of the aging of the child characters. So as soon as they start on LWW, they're essentially locked into doing those four in that order in very quick succession, especially given the length of time it takes to produce each film (up to two years each, possibly longer).

However, much depends on if the series is meant to be live or if it is going to be animated, instead. Both BBC's television series in the 1980's early 1990's and the Walden series, starting with LWW in 2004, were done the way you suggest. The difficulty was that for one reason and the other, they took too long about the gaps between each film.

HHB could have been done almost concurrently, or perhaps overlapping with either LWW or PC, giving work to at least 3 of the adults playing the short bit at the end, as the adult Pevensies return in LWW back to being children in the Professor's home. It also has the advantage of being in a different location to that of either PC or LWW. There is only one truly Narnian scene in HHB, when Shasta has breakfast with 3 dwarfs, whilst Chervil the stag takes Shasta's message to Cair Paravel. 

Again, much depends on whether the series is meant to be live or if it is going to be animated. If it is live I agree with you but if animated, HHB should be seriously locked in, in my view.

And although LWW has to be done next, regardless of how often it has been filmed already, if the time lapse is so important, that would be one time to do it. 

So, my 1st order would be:

1. Magician's Nephew (because it is already being made)

2. LWW

3. HHB 

4. PC

5. VDT

6. SC

7. LB.

Or, my 2nd order would have to be

1. Magician's Nephew ( again, because it is already being made)

2. LWW

3. PC

4. VDT

5. HHB (to explain the song Eustace & Jill heard at Cair Paravel in SC about HHB)

6. SC (though I realise it leaves an inconvenient gap between VDT & LB, it also keeps separate Jill & Eustace from Lucy and Edmund's other adventures in Narnia). 

7. LB, which makes more sense as the last film of them all, when it ties all of the books together. 

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

However, much depends on if the series is meant to be live or if it is going to be animated, instead.

I haven't heard any suggestion that Netflix's Narnia series is going to be animated. All the indications are that Greta Gerwig's upcoming adaptation of MN will be live action, at least as far as the human characters are concerned (of course the animals, including Aslan himself, will be CGI). Otherwise they'd be looking for voice actors only, and certainly wouldn't have put out a specific casting call for an Anglo-Indian boy (whether that's intended to be Digory or some totally new character).

And since the first film in the new franchise is obviously going to be live action, it wouldn't make sense to anticipate that any of the following films will be animated (as in 100% animated, not just the necessary CGI for talking animals etc.).

I can sort of imagine it happening if Netflix was the sort of independent "art house" kind of studio that might decide to hire a different auteur to direct each film and get each one to take a totally individual creative approach, putting his or her own unique stamp on it, as it were. But I really don't get the impression that's the way Netflix tends to do things.  

I still think that HHB should be filmed before PC, if possible, though I acknowledge that as with Walden, which was live, there is a need to allow for the children's age brackets in each movie. Peter was the same age as Caspian in PC, but in VDT, Caspian is supposed to be a good 3 years older than he was in PC, whilst Edmund & Lucy are only about one year older at most. If you leave HHB until after SC, that also breaks the continuity between Eustace & Jill, in SC & LB.

Posted by: @courtenay

I haven't heard any suggestion that Netflix's Narnia series is going to be animated. All the indications are that Greta Gerwig's upcoming adaptation of MN will be live action, at least as far as the human characters are concerned (of course the animals, including Aslan himself, will be CGI). Otherwise they'd be looking for voice actors only, and certainly wouldn't have put out a specific casting call for an Anglo-Indian boy (whether that's intended to be Digory or some totally new character).

I could see the Horse and His Boy being animated even if the rest of the series was live action for a few reasons:

1. The characters we know are different ages to what they are in the rest of the series (admittedly Peter's reference to the planting of the orchard in Cair Paravel just before the ambassadors from Calormen arrived in Prince Caspian and Susan's comment about the moles just starting to plant an orchard before the ambassador's arrived in the Horse and His Boy seem to imply that the Pevencies exited Narnia shortly after the events in The Horse and His Boy.  Matching the adult Pevensies from the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe would require filming to start soon after its completion of that movie - in parallel to Prince Caspian - which I can not see happening.)  Thus, there would be almost no re-use of existing actors for the production.

2. Almost none of the story takes place in Narnia. (Shasta's time in Narnia is limited to places we do not see in the other stories (aside from a distance view of the hill of the stone table.)  Unless Corin's description of arriving at Cair Paravel is depicted visually, not even Cair Paravel features in this story.  This would mean no locations are re-used and all sets for this movie would be one-offs.

3. Though fully animated movies are expensive, a live action production of The Horse and His Boy would require a huge amount of photorealistic CGI; Bree and Hwin feature throughout the entire run time of the story and need to give authentic, dramatic performances for the story to hold up.  It might be cheaper to make a fully animated movie than to undertake so much demanding VFX.

I am of the opinion that filming HHB and LWW concurrently would be a great idea, especially as it could utilize adult Pevensie cast at the end of LWW in the HHB more.  In terms of the order of release though, I think it could work releasing HHB second as I believe I read in one of the posts, however I would think it would best be released either straight after LWW or in a similar order to the publication order - namely releasing it after SC.  I really would love to see those involved in filming the entire Narnia film & TV series (or however Netflix plans to release them) that they be bold and really invest great effort in bringing all the stories to life - in so far as being prepared to film stories concurrently in a similar way to Peter Jackson did with The Lord of the Rings.  It really shone through in Peter Jackson's productions, and I believe it would show through in these productions also, the love and appreciation for them.

I do think there's a decent chance of us seeing all 7 books adapted this time around simply because of Netflix's involvement. They're quite flexible and not tied to one specific medium considering most of their franchises have a spin-off or animated series. I like the idea that not every one of their Narnia adaptations needs to be an IMAX blockbuster.

I'm not sure how exactly you'd do it, but I think it's likely we'll get multiple animated or episodic versions. My ideal release order would be to follow chronological order.

• MN (2026)
• LWW (2028)
• HHB* (2029)
• PC (2030)
• VDT* (2031)
• SC* (2032)
• LB (2034)

* denotes a series or animated movie