Other Titles • The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) • The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe • The Chronicles of Narnia
From the beginning, C.S. Lewis had wanted the experience of Narnia’s wonders to be open to people of all backgrounds and ages. Explains the film’s co-producer, Lewis’ stepson Douglas Gresham, who grew up knowing Lewis and his writing intimately: “C.S. Lewis’ mandate, his main idea about writing for children, included the theory that if a book is worth reading when you’re five, it is still equally worth reading when you’re 50. So The Chronicles of Narnia was intended to be read to children and by children and also to be read by adults with great joy even to the last days of their lives.”
Along with a few other rare stories such as The Lord of the Rings (written by Lewis’ close friend and contemporary J.R.R. Tolkien), The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe became the equivalent of a foundational 20th-century fable. It was one of those timeless adventures that equally fascinated grade-schoolers, grown-up readers and the most sophisticated literary scholars intrigued by its metaphors and spiritual allegories. It soon saw many incarnations in stage versions, as a British television series, as an animated film and even in a BBC version created almost entirely with puppets.
But no one dared to attempt to bring Lewis’ land of Narnia to life with real actors and sets, perhaps because it simply seemed too vast and overwhelming an undertaking. Only recently, as technology has at last begun to catch up with Lewis’ far-reaching imagination, was it even possible to imagine re-creating Narnia with the thrilling realism director Andrew Adamson brings to the story.
C.S. Lewis’ stepson, Douglas Gresham—the creative and artistic director of Lewis’ estate and the C.S. Lewis Company— always believed a motion picture of Lewis’ masterwork would one day become reality. He stuck by the dream of bringing the story to life in a way that would honor Lewis’ enduring creation for decades. “I’ve been working on seeing a movie made of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, one way or another, for probably 25 or 30 years,” Gresham notes. It was not until Gresham was approached by Walden Media that the project truly began to take shape. “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was my very favorite book as a kid, like it was for so many other people,” notes executive producer Perry Moore, who was then a film executive at Walden Media. “I always thought it was the perfect fit for Walden.”
From the start, everyone at Walden and subsequently at Disney was committed to remaining steadfastly true to the spirit of C.S. Lewis’ story—without adding manufactured twists to a story that has continued to inspire generation after generation. “On the very first day that we sat down with the estate, we assured them that we were going to do an absolutely faithful adaptation,” Cary Granat of Walden Media explains. “Perry and I and, most importantly, Phil Anschutz [Walden Media’s founder], were devoted to that vision. We weren’t looking to put modern-day spin on this piece, but to honor it as a classic of all times.”
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