A 10-minute sneak preview of the upcoming film "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe'' drew prolonged cheers and applause Tuesday from a specially invited crowd of ministers and church leaders in Wheaton. It's not just that the audience liked what it saw on-screen, they also embraced the implicit Christian themes expressed in the long-awaited movie, based on the popular book series by author C.S. Lewis. [More]

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 11 - With two months to go before the release of its big-budget film "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," the Walt Disney company wants very much to whet audience appetites by placing music from the soundtrack on radio and music-video channels. But Disney's tricky marketing strategy for "Narnia" - which includes aggressively courting Christian fans who can relate to the story's biblical allegory while trying not to disaffect secular fans - is particularly tricky when it comes to music. [More]

The four child stars of upcoming movie The Chronicles of Narnia have appeared in London's Leicester Square. The youngsters play the Pevensie children in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, which hopes to rival Harry Potter at the Christmas box office. Adapted from the CS Lewis book, the film also features Tilda Swinton as the White Witch and Liam Neeson as the voice of Aslan the lion. [More]

Pale, posh and scarily clever, Tilda Swinton is one of our most unique actors. Here, she talks about Derek Jarman, ghosts and why making films is like being in the army. 'There's such an effort to try and explain people,' says Tilda Swinton, folding in on herself for mildly exasperated emphasis. She doesn't want to know why people are freaks, she says, they just are. 'That's what I love about freaks. They kind of decide to be - or we decide to be, I don't know - but the idea of trying to psychoanalyse freaks ... it's kind of a waste, isn't it, of their freakishness?' [More]

Roar! A Christian Family Guide to the Chronicles of Narnia is by Heather Kopp with David Kopp. The book’s illustrations are by Martin French. The trio does a great job with the text and illustrations. The authors divide the book into five parts. And all parts are interesting. The authors thoughtfully included a biography of C. S. Lewis along with the book’s introduction to Roar! in Part 1. Roar! A Christian Family Guide to the Chronicles of Narnia is a joy. It contains so much information for readers of The Chronicles of Narnia. In Part two, the seven books, chapter by chapter, are discussed. The difficult or unfamiliar words, in each chapter, are explained. There are thoughts on the chapter’s story complete with related Bible scripture. Fun quizzes accompany some chapter discussions. [More]

Order 'Roar! : A Christian Family Guide to the Chronicles of Narnia' on Amazon.com today!

Walt Disney Studios is hoping that the same kind of church-based campaign that helped turn "The Passion of the Christ" into a blockbuster will convert C.S. Lewis' children's classic "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" into a big-screen franchise -- with "Lion King"-size profits. Directed by Andrew Adamson ("Shrek"), the $150-million mix of computer-generated imagery and live action is due out Dec. 9 from Disney and Walden Media. Based on the first installment in a book series that has sold a combined 90 million copies over 55 years, the project seems tailor-made for the faith and family market. [More]

It is set to be the fiercest clash in cinema box office history: Aslan, King of Narnia, versus King Kong. Walt Disney's eagerly awaited The Chronicles Of Narnia, an adaptation of C S Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Universal's remake of King Kong are to open in British cinemas within days of each other. Industry experts had expected the two Hollywood studios, both of which are mounting £10 million publicity campaigns for their films, to avoid each other's release dates. However, the two blockbusters, which each have to recoup production costs in excess of £60 million, will now both open during the same week in December. [More]

From Jette Kernion of cinematical.com: Despite the crummy weather and resulting traffic nightmare in Austin on Friday, I was able to haul ass across town to the Alamo Drafthouse for the second day of Fantastic Fest, in good time to attend the presentation on special effects in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The lobby area of the Alamo had transformed entirely from Thursday's Zathura theme to Narnia. Several large glass cases housed models of various creatures, armor, and weapons used in the film. Two nearby monitors showed "Making of" featurettes. The metal-detector drill was even more severe than on the previous day. Howard Berger from KNB EFX (aka "the B of KNB") brought along some interesting samples of his work from the film, as well as two slide shows. The presentation also included a 10-minute preview of the film. In between, Berger fielded questions from audience members and moderator Harry Knowles. Berger said that for The Chronicles of Narnia, KNB was responsible for creating many of the creature effects. CG effects were used for Aslan the lion, the faun legs, and a few other creature effects, but KNB designed costumes and makeup for 23 species and 170 individual characters. The armor and weaponry were designed by Weta. [More]

Weta Digital has bought 250 more blade servers with a total list price of between $2 million and $3 million to complete post-production work on Peter Jackson's King Kong, due out in January. The IBM Xeon blade servers, each with two 3.4 gigahertz processors and 8 gigabytes of memory, are housed at the New Zealand Supercomputing Centre in central Wellington. They have been added to the centre's existing bank of 1144 Intel 2.8GHz processors, boosting its power by 50 per cent to create a supercomputer with the equivalent power of nearly 15,000 PCs. [More]

Newswise — An Elizabethtown College English professor has written a companion volume to C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series just in time for the December release of the Walt Disney film “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.” David Downing’s book, “Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles” tells of the genesis of “The Chronicles of Narnia,” a seven-book series written by Lewis. The first book in the series, “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,” introduces readers to four London children who are sent to a professor’s country home for protection during World War II. There they find a magic wardrobe that leads to a mystical land called Narnia, which is being ruled by an evil witch. To defeat the witch, they must join forces with Aslan, the lion God of Narnia, and fight the great battle between good and evil. [More]

Order 'Into the Wardrobe: C. S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles ' on Amazon.com now!

Walt Disney Studios is hoping that the same kind of church-based campaign that helped turn "The Passion of the Christ" into a blockbuster will convert C.S. Lewis' children's classic "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" into a big-screen franchise — with "Lion King"-sized profits. Directed by Andrew Adamson ("Shrek"), the $150-million mix of computer-generated imagery and live action is due out Dec. 9 from Disney and Walden Media. Based on the first installment in a book series that has sold a combined 90 million copies over 55 years, the project seems tailor-made for the faith and family market. [More]

Hollywood has been turning best-selling novels into movies for decades, as far back as ''Gone With the Wind." But publishers have usually had nothing to do with it. They watched and hoped the movie would drive up sales of the book. Sometimes it did, but just as often it didn't. That whole disconnect is disappearing. The best new example is the Dec. 9 release of the movie ''The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," based on the C.S. Lewis children's classic. Far from sitting back and watching, publisher HarperCollins is working closely with filmmaker Walden Media, unleashing a massive worldwide marketing drive for the books, timed to coincide with the film -- and not only for ''The Chronicles of Narnia," but most of Lewis's other books as well. [More]

Earlier this month, Disney ran the first test screening of its December release, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe in a California theater. The existence of a screenable print constitutes a kind of opening bell for two questions regarding its content. The answer to the first, "Is it any good as a movie?" will be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Disney and its co-producer, Walden Media and will only be known later this year when the box office comes in. The second, more intriguing question, "Has it reproduced the Christian character of C.S. Lewis's book?" [More]

Glamdringrb writes: I thought you'd be interested in a six week seminar taking place on Wheaton College campus in Wheaton, Illinois. It includes a visit to the Wade Center where CS Lewis' desk and wardrobe are on display and JRR TOLKEIN's desk is on display. You can even touch them and kids can step into the wardrobe where fur coats are a'hanging. The Wade Center is an amazing little library/museum full of fantastic British authors works and some very interesting Tolkein original writings and other items related to The Lord of the Rings. The seminar is as follows and meets in the Rolland Center cafe - lower level. An as-of-now unscheduled trip to see the anticipated movie that we are all anticipating. [wheaton.edu]