Infuze Magazine talked to Walden Media’s Bob Beltz about the status of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, which will start principal photography this month.
Asked for an update and whether the script is sticking closely to the book, Beltz said, “It’s pretty close. Andrew Adamson is gonna direct again. Most of the same crew is working on this one. Mark Johnson will produce again. A lot of the cast and crew will be the same. Now, I don’t think that will the case for all seven. I don’t think Andrew Adamson wants to spend the rest of his life on this one series. But the script… let me put it this way: All of the elements from the book are present. It’s not as easy of a book to adapt as The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was simply because it has a little bit of a different structure and Andrew wanted to rearrange some of the elements for dramatic effect. But everything that is in the book will be in the film.”
He also addressed the fact that the children have grown up from when they shot the first film. “We’re actually using the same four kids and I know that three of them actually look almost the same as they did. Skandar [Keynes] who played Edmund has grown about seven inches and looks like a full blown adolescent now. In the Lewis story, there’s only a year that has taken place between the first and second book and I think that will just get left a little open ended. The big challenge is going to be Edmund I think.”
Beltz said the next book they will take on after “Prince Caspian” is “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.”We’re going to try and film the next two in a way that it won’t have to be two and a half years between them. We’ll be able to bring them out sequentially a year apart.”
He explained a bit more. “The way I understand it is that it takes six months to do the live photography on ‘Caspian’ and then a full year of post-production with all of the effects and computer generated things that have to get done. In theory, what we’ll do is as soon as they are done filming ‘Caspian’ and into post-production, then we’ll have a new crew to do the filming part of ‘Dawn Treader.’ Then when that one goes into post-production, we’re hoping to go into ‘The Silver Chair,’ which would be the next book into production.”
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is scheduled for release by Disney on May 16, 2008.
