Cleander wrote: And yes, I was wondering why the news hasn't caused much of an explosive stir on Narniaweb. Hopefully we'll get something more decisive- sounding by the end of the summer that will get more folks interested.
I think as Narnia fans we have become more than accustomed to our fair share of false dawns over the years, with announcements made about writers, directors, shooting dates and even casting rumours all coming to nothing. So I think its only natural that people are going to need to start seeing tangible outputs before they can get genuinely excited about the prospects of things actually moving forward. I think a logo, or a piece of concept art, or something which is indicative of the creative vision, would be a good place to start.
Secondly, I think as movie fans in general, we've probably all grown accustomed to the grand promises made by various studios, announcing ambitious plans for their own multi-format interconnected cinematic universes to rival Marvel's, only to see them fall flat on their face after just one outing, or never getting off the ground at all.
DC Comics for example, after the first few films in its burgeoning cinematic universe bombed with audiences and critics alike, held a massive tv special where they announced legendary comic book writer Geoff Johns as the "chief creative officer" to oversee their entire universe going forward, and announced a tonne of movies which never came out (
including Cyborg, Flash and Green Lantern Corps) and whilst the universe has stumbled on with the odd disconnected film here and there, any sense of having a cohesive crafted universe overseen by a singular visionary producer, pretty much lies in ruins.
Universal Studios similarly made a massive announcement (twice!) about setting up its own interconnected Monsters Universe - firstly with Dracula Untold, and then again with The Mummy - the latter being accompanied by announcements for Johnny Depp as The Invisible Man, Javier Bardem as the Wolfman and Angelina Jolie as the Bride of Frankenstein - again all of this came crashing down along with The Mummy's dismal boxoffice, and the entire thing was never to be heard of again.
Universal also made another ill-fated grand announcement about a massive interconnected adaptation of Stephen King's Dark Tower book series, which was supposed to span multiple movies and television shows.... production troubles ensued and Sony ended up picking up the scraps with just a single solitary, poorly received movie resulting (
Amazon have now picked up the rights for a full reboot).
20th Century Fox, not to be outdone, did a big announcement at Comic Con one year where they officially announced the start of their expanded X-Men Universe, which was to include Channing Tatum as Gambit, and an X-Men vs Fantastic Four crossover event movie. To date Channing's only contribution to that film series was an awkward photo shoot at said event, and the less said about where Fantastic Four went the better. Again, one glance at Dark Phoenix's dismal box office returns probably tells you everything you need to know about how well all of their bluster paid off.
I could probably go on-and-on (
Warner Bros' six-part King Arthur universe announcement, Paramount's Hasbro Cinematic Universe announcement, the Mattel Toys Cinematic universe, etc. etc. ) but suffice to say, the movie landscape is littered with promises of delivering massive cinematic universes spanning multiple movies and/or TV series, and to date the only one who has pulled this off has been Kevin Feige's Marvel Studios, therefore I think its only reasonably that this announcement be treated with a healthy dose of scepticism for now.
