That wallpaper looks like it might do well for concept art for Last Battle, but it would have to be on a bit smaller scale.

I think the serpent issue is easy. Its head, in the movie, doesn't need to be "hacked off". Seriously, it doesn't. The important part of the scene is that the Lady of the Green Kirtle is killed, how she is killed isn't really that important.

Yes it does matter. The Lady of the Green Kirtle/Snake getting her head cut off is FREAKING AWESOME!!! I love it when the bad guys get a gross, but satisfying demise. I would hate it if they ruined the death scene to appeal to 5 year olds who probably wouldnt understand the movie anyway.

I don't want the violence in these movies to be gratuitious (i.e. "ooh lookit all the blood!! ). It's important that the Lady of the Green Kirtle is killed, but it doesn't have to be, and frankly shouldn't be, an uber gore-fest. Reading about a head getting hacked off is different from seeing one.

As far as the children in the audience, the film-makers should take the same approach as Lewis. Don't protect them from the evils of this world, but don't scar them for life either. And have faith in children. They're smarter than people give them credit for.

It definitely shouldn't look like a horror movie, at the same time, I don't want it to be too kiddy, either. You would have to radically alter the story and the themes to make it accessible to Barney fans. I'm not even talking about protecting them, just getting the little sugar-fiends to pay attention. I think the target audience should be mid/late elementary school to middle school.

Wow, a lot of catching up for me to do in this thread . . .

I'm surprised that so many people don't like Johnny Depp, calling him too showy or that you never forget it's Johnny Depp. I completely disagree. It blows my mind that the same guy who played Cap'n Jack also played Ed Wood, Willy Wonka, and J.M. Barrie. He seems completely different in all of those roles, and I forgot right away in each of those films that I was watching Depp. He BECAME those characters.

Also, Johnny Depp is not a comedian. Jim Carrey is a comedian. Depp has switched effortlessly from comedy to drama, and in fact I think his dramatic roles far outweigh his comedic roles.

All of that is not to say that Depp is the right choice for Puddleglum. He might be too famous now, and people might say, "Oh, another fantasy film with Johnny Depp. What do I care?" My only issue is with the many disparaging things said about Depp as an actor.

I kind of like the suggestion of David Tennant as Puddleglum. I enjoy David Tennant in anything. But Tennant may be too upbeat for such a role. I think I might go with Christopher Eccleston instead. Eccleston also starred in Doctor Who, and he had a more downbeat (but nonetheless comic) edge to him.

Not sure on LotGK. It would have to be someone with a lot of depth and dramatic weight to them. I've seen Cate Blanchett in two movies (Indiana Jones IV and Benjamin Button) and hated her in both, so I would say no. Maybe the gorgeous lady from The Tudors that was mentioned - but I've only seen pictures of her; I've never seen her act. She's got great "wicked" eyes, though.

Director: Not Adamson, for sure. I still haven't seen VoDT (and it's killing me! But I'm broke and jobless. I'll have to wait for video), so I can't comment on Apted. But I like the suggestions of Mike Newell and Alfonso Cauron, because I loved their respective Harry Potter movies, but then maybe we don't want too close of an association with HP.

Not Tim Burton either. He dislikes anything he interprets as "traditional," and that seems to apply to morality as well. In Sleepy Hollow, one of the main "heroic" characters does a "good" thing by drawing a pentagram in blood on the floor. This is not a man I want at the helm of Narnia.

I could go for one of the directors of the modern incarnation of Doctor Who. That show alternates nicely between childlike sense of wonder, excitement and action, scary stuff, and emotional stuff.

Writer: As I said in another thread, Linda Woolverton (Disney's Beauty and the Beast and the 2010 Alice in Wonderland) does an excellent job of respecting the source material and remaining true to many of its elements. That's who I would want . . . assuming, of course, that they don't call me.

Rating: You all are forgetting how violent and dark G-rated Disney cartoons can be. I mean, parents die with alarming regularity in those films! Also, the woodsman was supposed to cut out Snow White's heart!

Also, the original Star Wars almost got a G rating, despite limbs being cut off, people being chopped in half, and Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru's corpses on fire! The studio (Fox!) had to ask for a PG rating!

You think that a CGI snake getting its head lopped off is gonna warrant a PG-13 rating? I would have to say, probably not, my friends.

We're gonna have to start a Magician's Nephew casting thread, now. It looks like SC will not be the next Narnia film, but rather MN. But that means we have to "cast" Uncle Andrew (I can already hear people saying "Johnny Depp!"), Digory and Polly, the Cabby and his wife, Aunt Ketterly, Digory's mom, and possibly some voice casting for the animals (Fledge, especially).

Time to switch books!

I'm not switching until there is an official MN greenlight
announcement. This SC thread has been too fun...I'd like it to continue even if they aren't making it next....

I love the idea of a new adaptation to Silver Chair, while I cringe at the thought of what Big Hollywood is going to do to MN, so I'll keep writing my thoughts on the film until I run out of ideas.

Speaking of which, I think one of the most problematic aspects of adapting SC for wide family audiences is it's dark tone. I think what they should do is alternate light and dark moments in the movie. The dark moments can be moments of suspense, playing up the thriller element in the story. Nothing is as it seems. The kids' expectations are constantly being turned on their heads. This is why I think Christopher Nolan would make an excellent director for this. Inception had a number of dark themes, as well as dark imagery, but it wasn't a dreary, depressing movie.

Then, they can alternate those dark moments with bright moments that play up the fairy tale aspect. Aslan's country, the court at Narnia, the sweet-voiced, beautiful lady in green, the bright and merry court of Harfang, with those jolly "gentle" giants, the glowing forest, and the snow dance. Who knows? If they do it well (and market it well) a fairy tale thriller might get people excited.

I've had thoughts about how they would adapt The Silver Chair for our modern times. With all of the previous discussion about how to adapt the film to fit Will Poulter's aging I started having thoughts about how they would adapt it not only with an older teenaged Eustace and Jill but also if they changed the milieu to today's 2011 instead of the WWII era. They've modernized some classics like Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Emma so I wonder what a modern SC would be like. Thoughts?

I don't think that would be possible. PC's Susaspian was supposed to make the story up-to-date to attract teenaged audiences, and look how that turned out! By the way, I don't think you realise just how drastically social attitudes to teenagers have changed in the last 50 years especially after C.S.Lewis died in 1963. In those days you had to be over 21 before you were considered an adult, whilst if you were still at school you were still considered a child however grown up you looked.

As I've already commented in the Magician's Nephew film thread, there is no need to worry about JillStace or Will Poulter being older, since in WW2 the rules and regulations governing 'romance' between teenagers was so strict in just about everywhere except in USA, it seems. Which is the true significance of Susan going to America, by the way, since her 'grown up' attitudes were certainly a reason for her leaving school in 1940's and 1950's UK.

Although I did not grow up in UK myself, I know that in the 1940's and 1950's even so-called 'easy-going' Australians took a dim view of school romances also. Those relationships were a bit too natural for the ethos of the day, it seemed. I still have a movie called The Delinquents which portrays life in Queensland in the 1950's and how one such school yard romance was dealt with. My great-aunt (pre WW1) was forced to leave school and marched off to work, despite being considered bright, merely because she was caught reading romance novels for entertainment. And though I am a post WW2 baby boomer, I remember that girls who were perceived to be 'in moral danger' might find themselves marched off to a Girls' home, just like the heroine of 'The Delinquents'.

This is one reason why the time difference between Narnia and UK works so well for C.S.Lewis, and also banning the Pevensies from Narnia once they are old enough to complete their basic education. In this way he gets around the quite heavy restrictions on how boys and girls, even brothers and sisters, normally interacted in daily life, until they were considered grown-up and ready to make their debut in Society.

And by the way, I doubt that the characters' interaction in SC is so awkward even if Will Poulter is older than one would like. Eustace falling off a cliff because of Jill's showing off, and Jill's thinking that Eustace was little better than the bullies, themselves, is not the best way to start a friendship, let alone a romantic one, however old Will Poulter is. By the end of SC Jill and Eustace were friends, but that was because of the adventure they had completed together, not because of any friendliness beforehand.

PC's Susaspian was supposed to make the story up-to-date to attract teenaged audiences, and look how that turned out!

Well that was because they were putting really modern romance concepts in that and completely changed the book. I meant more loosely based modern updating...though of course if SC went more modern into 2011 I guess it wouldn't cover the original intent of the C.S. Lewis SC anymore as you say and probably would include 'Jillstace'. Was just wondering.... probably best leave it in its own time.

That's something I like about Narnia. It doesn't just take place in another world; the stories take place during a historical time period in our own world. (Even when Lewis wrote LWW I think it was ten years after the Blitz in London.)

Lewis finished writing LWW sometime in 1949, I can't remember when the London Blitz was though. I certainly wouldn't want SC or MN modernised in any form.

A possible film is all the Silver Chair seems to be at this time. Now there are rumours circulating around that the Magician and His Nephew may take precedence over the SC. It really is a shame that the production team did not take on what the LOTR team did and that was to do three movies all at the same time.

The Magician and His Nephew
The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe
The Boy and His Horse

Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

This could have captured the essence of The Chronicles of Narnia and just maybe have being filmed in England because of the ages of the children.

Will Poulter did excellent as Eustace Scrubb so the safest bet would be to go for the filming of the Silver Chair.

A shame? Not really. The intense work of working on Lord of the Rings almost killed Peter Jackson, not to mention that the LotR is one story and the Chronicles can be read as standalone novels.
Also, chronological order is just an awful idea.

Lewis finished writing LWW sometime in 1949, I can't remember when the London Blitz was though. I certainly wouldn't want SC or MN modernised in any form.

FYI, the London Blitz started in 1940 as per the linked article. A Wikipedia article gives a lot more detail about subsequent bombings. My husband lived near Edinburgh at that time as a small boy. And LWW, as well as later Narnia episodes, were all written after I was born in 1948. I didn't read the novels for myself until after I left boarding school in 1956, by which time The Last Battle was published.

When we (husband and self) visited UK in Aug-Sept 2009, we went to Oxford, where the guide told us that Hitler wanted Oxford to be the capital of the UK he envisaged, which is why it was spared the bombings everywhere else in UK suffered. Oxford has largely missed the sort of urban renewing and cleansing which has rejuvenated other UK towns as a result. But as a matter of curiosity, Oxford's WW2 experiences might also be a reason for VDT to have Eustace grow up in Cambridge instead.

Later bombings, in particular in 1944 did cause more casualties in London. After all, it was a prime strategic target for the Germans. And yes, I am very proud to say that some of my ancestors were Londoners, even though my Dad did his military service in Darwin and Timor at the time.

I applaud the Walden series so far for depicting the Narnia series in the light of WW2. Getting back to SC, I don't agree the war should be over if the SC film is shown. At least they should show some of the casualties of this most horrific time which could shed some background light on Rilian's depressed and amnesiac state of mind.