Narnia: The Silver Chair to Begin Filming Winter 2018, Director Hopes
UPDATE 11/27/18:
This report is over a year old and there are no longer any plans to begin filming in 2018. Netflix is now developing Narnia adaptations, and how that will affect The Silver Chair has not been officially addressed.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair director Joe Johnston was in attendance at a comic convention in Paris last week. He was interviewed about his career in film and answered some questions about Narnia.
In this interview, Johnston says that they are currently “rewriting the script” and will hopefully shoot in New Zealand next winter.
In a second interview, Joe Johnston has further remarks about The Silver Chair. Check out the video or transcript below:
Q: Could you tell me a little bit about Narnia: The Silver Chair?
JJ: It’s the fourth film in the series. It’s a totally new, different studio. It’s Sony and Mark Gordon Company. We are planning to shoot it in New Zealand next winter, so we’d probably start prep maybe in July and then shoot in the South Island of New Zealand.
It’s a little bit darker than the other Narnia films. I think The Silver Chair was the darkest of the books. It’s classic literature, really. I think the work of C.S. Lewis is amazing — even though they were written for children, it’s classic literature, and I just thought that this would be fun. I love New Zealand, too.
Q: Is it going to be visually different because it’s a new studio or are you going to try to keep the look of the previous films?
JJ: No, I don’t want it to look like the other films. I want an audience to look at The Silver Chair and think, “This is a whole new vision of The Chronicles of Narnia.” In fact, I don’t even want to reference the other films. It’s like it’s starting a whole new thing.
Thanks to narnia fan 7 for the alert.
Here is everything we know about The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair.
Gonna be honest, I'm sticking this franchise out for one reason only; I have been waiting since I was a small child to see two books, two in particular, adapted to film:
The Horse And His Boy and The Magician's Nephew.
The BBC versions of TCON were enough for me as a kid, but those two books just couldn't have justice done–ESPECIALLY The Magician's Nephew–without the technology we have today. I want to see Tashbaan, I want to see Tolkein's answer to Aladdin meets a boy's version of a Cinderella rags-to-riches story. I want to see the creation of Narnia, the garden, and, my GOD, I want to see Charn. I want to see the beautiful, frozen world on the verge of ending… the hall of the images of the white queen's ancestors… I want to see Jadis, frozen in time, at her moment of triumph, yet awaiting rescue.
I admit, I did love the Voyage of the Dawntreader, and I was -crushed- that they left out my favorite scene in the whole entire book, but even so, I had a good enough film version of that. These two, though, have never been done and they deserve at least one shot at the silver screen and I gotta be there to see it.
The silver chair is… not the darkest of the books by a long shot; it's the second darkest, fine. But The Last Battle is much worse, it's filled with death, not just by battle, not just of minor characters, but of a whole world.
It's accompanied by the strong implication–if you follow C.S. Lewis' deliberate religious themes–that one of the children abandoned her loyalties and is thus damned to hell.
Seriously, it's like a Greek Tragedy; "And then everybody died" could sum up the book, and yes… yes, it's meant to be a positive thing, I understand that the majority of them go to fantasy heaven even if others appear to be stuck in hell or limbo / purgatory, but… it was still a seriously disturbing read as a child. I just wanted to continue reading about the adventures of kids in a fantasy land.
Oh! I hope not but that could be I guess! Makes sense in terms of actually having a consistent story.