TLC Forum

I know this is really premature, but I just started wondering, and thought I'd ask what you think. Assuming The Silver Chair is successful and they want to make the rest of the books, which book should they make next?

After The Silver Chair, it's kinda "anything goes", since we're done with the PC/VDT/SC group that you really need to keep in order. There's a sense in which it's hard to imagine not having The Last Battle last, because it ends things off (not to mention questions about how feasible it is to make a Last Battle film at all). This leaves The Magicians Nephew and The Horse and His Boy, one of which is a prequel and the other an insert/spin-off.

On the other hand, if we want to be practical, maybe The Last Battle does need to follow The Silver Chair as it's a Eustace and Jill adventure. Sure, the Pevensies are in it to a small extent, but if we want the same actor and actress to play Eustace and Jill, having learnt what we have about child actor ageing, it might make the most sense.

Anyway, those are my (slightly confused) thoughts. What do you think?

Hm. I too think it logical that LB wraps things up, but the practicalities of waiting for MN and HHB releases? That could hurt unless they do what was done with LotR and TH and film them all roughly around the same time. Problem with that is that, unlike LotR and TH, the Narnias don't really have overlapping characters. So it'd be a ton of money for all of the actors and a whack of work for multiple teams of camera crews. Not to mention further divisions in various departments (ie: one team to focus on Calormene/Archenland art design, another to focus on turn-of-the-century London, etc)... and that's not counting possibly multiple directors, producers, etc..

If they are going to make The Last Battle, it would make more sense to use the same actors for Jill and Eustace and have it come immediately after. The problem is, that the Magician's Nephew would then come after the LB and that would be confusing unless they heavily advertized it as a prequel like was done with Star Wars.

I think HHB could easily stand by itself as a movie, provided they did a good job making it. However, it would be weird if they had already made LB because Aravis, Cor, Bree, and Hwin are all in LB, so unless they had already figured out who the actors would be for HHB at the time they filmed LB we wouldn't get to see them in the LB. Of course, this is a minor plot point and not really necessary to the story.

Personally I would like them to continue in the order of book release which means Horse and His Boy next. It seems the best way to get all seven books made into a movie series.

Ariel.of.Narnia wrote:So it'd be a ton of money for all of the actors and a whack of work for multiple teams of camera crews. Not to mention further divisions in various departments (ie: one team to focus on Calormene/Archenland art design, another to focus on turn-of-the-century London, etc)... and that's not counting possibly multiple directors, producers, etc..

1) camera team, directors, producers could be identical
2) art design was diversified for LotR and TH too
3) actors as main characters are only a few, and "extras" (like crowd around Shasta, crowd around lamp post fight in London, etc) could be identical for more than one film
4) some actors could take two roles. Frank and King Lune are related, so they could be same actor with some diverse masking. However, Digory and Shasta are NOT and should not be same actor. Apart from that, while one film was being done, the actors of another could switch between watching and smaller roles.

HermitoftheNorthernMarch wrote:If they are going to make The Last Battle, it would make more sense to use the same actors for Jill and Eustace and have it come immediately after.

Actually, there could be a few years between. SC = 15-ish. LB = 20-ish. I mean characters, not actors necessarily.

@hansgeorg: They could try to do it that way, but if they attempt to have one director for all three (all at once) would take a very special individual. Directing is hard work and there's more than enough of switching gears during the filming of one movie without having to do it among and between three. As it is, Andrew Adamson did not take on VDT as it was too close to PC for him to give both films the attention they needed.

I would totally go with The Last Battle. The Magician's Nephew and The Horse and His Boy might be a little awkward to insert in the middle of SC and LB, seeing as those two novels are pretty connected (Jill and Eustace being the main characters).

Alternatively... would it be possible for them to do some of the key filming for LB, on the actors' end, consecutive to beginning work on another film in order to get them at the right ages, and then save that footage to splice between scenes with other characters and add in the CGI at a later date? Or would the expense of that without immediate payoff make it impractical?

That's a nice idea, Lily. They could even record some footage of the original Pevensie actors for that purpose (they might be already bordering on too old for that but I think they're probably about the right age right now) - I'm always a little uncertain as to how old the Pevensies are supposed to be in LB.

Unfortunately, I can't see that happening with things standing as they do right now. If they knew for certain that all 7 films would eventually be made, that would be a good idea, but I think they're basically taking it a film at a time and seeing how things go from there. With that in mind, it's unlikely they would be willing to risk the expense without certainty of any pay-off.

Yeah... That's a point I hadn't taken into consideration. >.<