Making it through all seven books, I suppose.

Honestly, I know I'm in the minority, but I don't really think there was that much wrong with the old Narnia movies, the first two anyway. (I'm not up for writing a really long post at the moment, so I'm just going to talk about them as movies, not adaptations.) Were they the greatest movies ever? No, but there was very little I considered subpar about them.

I think the casting (again, this is just for the two movies) was great. Even the actors in minor roles were charismatic. I think the art direction and the design were great. A few quibbles aside (mostly with character design), they totally captured how I believe Narnia should look and I doubt that aspect will be equaled by future adaptations. I thought the music was great too. In fact, there was only one thing I didn't think was great. 

The writing.

That being said, I don't feel the writing was terrible or anything. It was just generic and on the pulpy side. Weirdly, I get less frustrated by movies where everything elevates the script than I get by movies where the script is wonderful and everything else lets it down. I guess the main aspect I believe a future adaptation could improve on the old Narnia (besides being closer to the books, which is something I'd like as a fan of them ) would be to have more inspired writing. 

I think the focus was placed too heavily on the Pevensies in LWW. Sure, it makes sense to flesh out your characters in an adaptation but the world of Narnia needs to be a main character. Along with Aslan, it is the one thing that features in every book.

I re-read the books because of the atmosphere that Lewis was able to create. Midnight dances with Fauns, treasure hunts with the Red Dwarfs, summer feasts by bonfires. The feeling of discovery, goodness, endless possibilities, and joy. It’s all genuine and I want to spend time in this world. Characters are important (and Narnia has some fantastic ones) but don't forgot to evoke those emotions & create atmosphere.

This sets Narnia a part from other franchises. Lean into it.

It'll also be what makes Narnia a place worth returning to, even without their favourite character.

@impending-doom avoid the sort of writers who decided early on which characters they liked, who was 'the voice of the author' (wrongly), and used a 'disney' generic format. 

Be different, be beautiful but real to the story. Make viewers want to revisit - by making it attractive and not just a fantasy.  Fantasy is almost done with now, so it's time for realism that's honest and attractive.  Appeal to the heart and the mind.

That's a really interesting question. Back in the day, measuring success used to be a fairly straight-forward proposition. A movie simply had to make more money at the box-office than it cost to produce (and market), whilst TV shows just needed to pull in a sufficient number of viewers to satisfy the advertiser's spend on commercial time. Things now are obviously a little more complex.

Netflix tend to have quite a strong reputation for cancelling shows prematurely after just 1 or 2 seasons, often seemingly without much rhyme or reason to its decision making. Its clearly not enough just to be a critical success, as there are plenty of critical darlings that get axed by Netflix. Its also clearly not enough to have a big online following, as plenty of shows with huge online fandoms also tend to get axed.

As far as I can tell from my reading of various articles online, Netflix uses a number of criteria to determine whether shows are "successful" enough to avoid cancellation:

• Total number of views - this used to be based on a movie being watched to at least 70% of the way through, but now I've heard they just go on the number of views of any duration.
• Total hours spent watching - the total duration you actually watched the content for.
• The number of Unique Viewers - the two statistics above both include repeat viewings by the same users (which is still in itself a good indicator of positive engagement) however they also consider the total number of unique viewers, as this is a better proxy for the number of actual subscribers.
• The completion rate - i.e. did viewers actually complete the entire season or did they bail out after a few episodes. Shows with good viewing numbers but poor audience retention rates are often swift for the axe.
• "Valued Hours" - This is one of the most interesting metrics that Netflix uses. Essentially this weights your views of a show based on the proportion it forms of your total Netflix activity. i.e. if a show appeals to viewers who only watch that show, then this is a good indicator that cancelling that 1 show will likely cost you a whole subscriber. If however, a viewer watches a lot of Netflix content in general, then their views against any one show count for less - i.e. you can probably safely cancel a show if you know that the majority of the viewers are people who will continue to subscribe because you know they watch a lot of other Netflix shows anyway.
• Week 1 Viewing Figures - Shows which generate big Week 1 numbers often avoid cancellation as its a good sign that the show managed to generate a lot of wider "buzz" to get everyone keen to watch the content as soon as it is released, rather than waiting.
• Length of Time Spent in the Top 10 - Shows which do big numbers in Week 1, but don't stick around in the Top 10 list for too long also tend to get cancelled pretty swiftly.
• Production Costs - Shows which cost a lot of money to produce very rarely seem to make it past 2 or 3 seasons, regardless of any other factors. This is something i would be very worried about with Narnia.
• Gut Instinct - I think i read one quote by a senior Netflix executive who said something along the lines of the decision to cancel a show being based on "30% Data Analytics, and 70% Gut Instinct". Which is to say, if the executives at Netflix feel that a show is worth keeping around, then they will probably still do it, regardless of what the raw numbers say.

Therefore, putting that all together, for me Narnia will have to do a number of things to be successful on Netflix if its to make it to the full 7 stories:

• Have a unique or interesting visual aesthetic - There are an awful lot of high quality TV offerings out there to entice viewers in, so i think that having a unique or interesting visual aesthetic will be vital. Something that turns people's heads as soon as they see it, and gets people discussing and sharing the trailer online. If it just looks like any other Fantasy Adventure show (of which there are dozens), then i could see it struggling to really make those big Week 1 numbers.
• Have interesting character journeys - Most of the shows that i've seen achieve long-term success on Netflix tend to be the ones with interesting characters that audiences want to follow from episode-to-episode, and from season-to-season. This goes for Netflix originals like 'Stranger Things', and regular network shows which really found their audience on Netflix like 'Breaking Bad'. For me they aren't really shows where the online discussion revolves around the twists and turns and cliff-hangers of the narrative, as the Netflix "all at once" model doesn't really lend itself towards that. More so its about being invested in the character's overall story. This is an area where Narnia could either do really well with, or could really struggle with, since most of the major characters tend to change from book-to-book, which may lower audience retention figures from season to season.
• Appeal to a big audience - Obviously it goes without saying that the bigger the audience the better, but to some extent Narnia fans might have to tolerate certain changes being made to appeal to as wide a demographic as possible, particularly across the international market. This is therefore likely to include more ethnically diverse casting choices compared to the Walden films. 
• Appeal to a unique audience - This is one area where Narnia could find its niche. The "valued hours" metric noted above is one which could really help Narnia if it is able to bring in audiences who don't normally watch a lot of other Netflix. Therefore appealing to demographics outside the standard 18-35 Male bracket might actually do it some favours. Pitching at Families and Younger Viewers is often seen as risky, since it is usually a demographic which spends less money, but in this case it could work well if it creates a more unique viewership.
• Keep production costs down - If Narnia becomes too expensive to produce, i can't see it sticking around on Netflix for too long. Its the ultimate kiss-of-death for any Netflix show.

Make a lot of merchandise and stay faithful to the spirit of the Narnia books. 

...I think the question at this point is more how much Netflix is *willing* to do. They keep starting promising shows and canceling them - sometimes even high-performing shows. They seem wary of investing seriously in what they make.

Having just responded to a video featured on FB, in which the video maker's fan casting was accompanied by his recommendations to age up the children and rewrite their characters, Netflix should Listen to the Estate, Read the books, and be forced to watch the worst adaptations using mid teens playing preteen book characters.

The first two are obvious, but the last requirement is crucial. I'm sorry for those of you who never saw the 70s and 80s BBC adaptations of a number of children's classics, and only saw the remakes in the 90s, 00s and 10s.

Examples: The Secret Garden 1975 (beautiful series with 11 year old playing Mary very well), Swallows and Amazons 1974 (the six child actors are naturals, the plot follows the book), The Children of Green Knowe 1986 (child role Tolly is played well by actor aged 12), and Ballet Shoes 1975 (children played their own ages well)
The remakes, Secret Garden (2020*), Swallows and Amazons (2016), From Time To Time (2009, adapting a Green Knowe story), and Ballet Shoes (2007) all aged up their child characters, and had them played well above the age they were written as in the books. In none of these cases was it a good idea.

* EDIT: I have amended this after being corrected.

@coracle Well, I'm afraid your object lesson doesn't work for me because I remember the young actors in The Secret Garden (1993) as being really good. (Also if they were teenagers, they must have found some incredible fountain of youth.) 

Of course, you can certainly criticize the movie/adaptation for other reasons, but I don't believe the casting is a great one.

I, myself, would have a problem with aging up the Narnian protagonists because it would send the message that Netflix or whoever is courting "mainstream audiences," not fans of the books. I don't watch anything because it's what the masses want to see; I watch it because it's what I want to see.

That being said, if the video makes the argument that they should age up the characters because the acting will be better...I can't necessarily argue with that. The Narnia adaptations that have gotten older actors to play the children had the most consistently great acting from their young cast. That's not to say there were no great actors in the other adaptations, just that not all of them were.  

@col-klink perhaps I remembered wrongly for that one (I didn't like the Eastern spirituality they introduced into it though, or the level of boy-girl cosiness at the end!)

I certainly didn't like the very adult performance of Mary in the most recent adaptation, not surprising as the actress was 16 or 17 when filming!

I've edited my previous post.

Sometimes it does work to "age up" a character if the actor playing that character is good enough at coming across as younger than that actor's real-life age — I'm thinking of Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (1939), who played Dorothy beautifully and convincingly, despite being 17 at the time. But I hope the next adaptation of Narnia doesn't portray the child characters as any older than they're supposed to be (we have their "canonical" ages from Lewis's own timeline). It's a fantasy series for children, and the child characters need to be ones that young viewers can relate to — and that hopefully transport older viewers back to their childhood as well!

There might be various reasons to age up a character (believability, logistical reasons, etc.) but I personally don't think potential acting ability is a very good reason. 

Ironically Lucy was the only character Walden didn't age up.  Georgie was 8 when filming started and yet she was the best actor out of the bunch - and they were all good! 

As somebody previously mentioned in this thread, getting somebody older to play a younger character can work really well if they can convincingly come off as that age. I recently watched something where that was the case, but I'm drawing a blank on it now. 

I might come back to this thread later if I remember it.  

I don't know how I would feel about aging up the characters. I think it's kind of unique to have kids doing the most unlikely things, and that's kind of what Narnia is.

Think of Frodo who is unlikely hero in Lord of the Rings or Taran in the Chronicles of Prydain series who has to do some dangerous things. The way I see Narnia is ordinary kids being called to do a difficult task.

@jasmine_tarkheena Frodo is 50 when he goes on his journey. Being played as much younger (and more attractive) gave the films a different feeling. (Yes, he was aged down, but an 18 year pld playing 30+ is a bit different again!

For what it's worth, I would not really consider the decision to age up the children as being a necessary condition to achieve commercial success, nor would I consider the decision to retain the exact child ages as being 100% necessary to achieving critical success either.

I would certainly prefer it if they matched the ages as close as possible (accepting the inherent difficulty of doing that within a production process that itself takes years to unfold) but I don't believe that having a successful show is entirely dependent on it either way.

The one thing I would though add to the debate however, is that we do need to be prepared to think about our measures of success in terms its impact beyond the relatively small Narnia fan community online.

If Narnia is to make it to a full 7 seasons on Netflix to cover all 7 books, it will quite literally have to become the single most successful show that Netflix has ever produced.

Yes there have been a couple of Netflix Originals that have managed to run for 7 or more seasons (and it is literally just the handful of shows that ever have achieved this milestone) but these were all produced during the very earliest days of Netflix when the creative reins were much looser, and none of them were the sorts of "high-concept / high cost", property like Narnia.

I'm not saying we should all compromise our personal opinions just in the hope that we might get to see 7 books adapted badly, I just think it's worth remembering that the road to continued success on Netflix is going to be much much harder than it was at Disney.