Mark Gordon Still Involved with Netflix’s Narnia, Hasbro Sells eOne to Lionsgate
It looks like film and television producer Mark Gordon is still involved with Netflix’s Narnia, but his company, Entertainment One, will soon be moving to a new home.
Netflix’s Head of Film Scott Stuber was originally quoted as saying director Greta Gerwig was working on Narnia with producer Amy Pascal, but Variety has since updated Stuber’s remarks to include producer Mark Gordon as well:
Obviously, ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ is kind of the preeminent one, but there’s such an interesting narrative form [to the Narnia series] if you read all of them. And so that’s what [Greta Gerwig] is working on now with [producers] Amy Pascal and Mark Gordon and they’re trying to figure out how they can break the whole arc of all of it.
Scott Stuber, Head of Film at Netflix
Mark Gordon has been working on bringing Narnia back to the screen since 2013. When Netflix purchased the rights to The Chronicles of Narnia in 2018, Gordon was listed as one of the producers attached to the project, along with the film and television company Entertainment One, also known as eOne.
At the time of Netflix’s acquisition, Gordon was quoted as saying:
“Narnia is one of those rare properties that spans multiple generations and geographies. [Entertainment One] and I are excited to be collaborating with The C.S. Lewis Company and Netflix who have the capacity to translate the Narnia universe into both stellar feature-length and episodic programming. We cannot wait to get started on the multiple productions we hope to undertake.”
Mark Gordon, October 2018
After serving as eOne’s president, Mark Gordon shifted to a producing deal with the company in 2019 and later created a new production company in collaboration with eOne in 2020.
In 2019, Hasbro acquired eOne, but it was announced in August that the toy company will be selling eOne’s film and television operations to Lionsgate for approximately $500 million. This deal is expected to close at the end of this year.
Will Entertainment One and Lionsgate be involved with Netflix’s upcoming Narnia adaptations? Time will tell, but for now, we know that Mark Gordon is still involved with the project.
Looking to catch up on all the news about Netflix’s Narnia? Here’s everything we know.
It seems like big studios have bought out other studios these days. Even Disney owns quite a few (Star Wars, Marvel, 20th Century Fox). Warner Brothers owns DC Cinematic Universe.
Now I wonder if eOne and Lionsgate will be invovled with Netflix’s upcoming project of Narnia. I’m sure we’ll here more news along the way.
Well, whatever else, Lionsgate is certainly an appropriate name for a company that may be involved in an adaptation of Narnia!! But that, of course, doesn’t guarantee they’ll do a good job of it…
Kind of hard to tell how all this will shake out but I’m glad to have Mark Gordon involved.
@courtenay That’s true, but I am a bit optimistic. I am willing to wait and see what happens. Who knows? Lionsgate could still make the Narnia project turn out better than we would have hoped for.
Further to my comment on a previous Narniaweb news article this week, this could be relevant to the marketing of this project to the Christian film market. After the Christian music film I Can Only Imagine that Lionsgate distributed made USD$86m worldwide, Lionsgate entered a “First Look” deal with directors the Erwin Brothers. This meant that the Erwin Brothers needed to show Lionsgate their pitches/projects first, and Lionsgate had the ability to say they would help finance it +distribute it, or not.
Since then, Lionsgate has released several Erwin Brothers films including I Still Believe (a box office failure, but only because Covid shut down movie theatres one week after it’s release), American Underdog (earned $26m) and Jesus Revolution (earned $54m). Lionsgate also is releasing a third Christian music biopic next year called Unsung Hero.
They have definitely carved out a niche as a mainstream company willing to capitalize financially on the hunger for faith-based films amongst modern churchgoers. They have developed methods of marketing to Christians via social media and elsewhere.
This aquisition, along with the comments from Netflix about Gerwig’s Christian upbringing lead me to believe that the new Narnia films will be marketed strongly to the Christian film audience, as well as the general mass market of course.
However the name Netflix still has some strong negative concerns amongst some Christians after their release of the controversial “Cuties” a couple years ago. Maybe Netflix needs to do some damage control on the image of their brand among that subculture, if they want subscription dollars from them.
This is nothing new. Disney marketed both films to churchgoers and I witnessed some of that in person. The Polar Express was also marketed to Christians I believe. Even though there is no concrete Christian/Bible themes. I suppose any movie that has a theme of “faith…” can be loosely marketed that way.
Long post! Thanks for reading this far. What do you think? Is it a good idea? useful for the production? Helpful to the Narnia fandom in anyway?
As long as 50% required diversity for all their movies and shows Disney isn’t involved. If Disney was involved, Peter and Susan would be African American, Lucy would be Asian, and Edmund would be white. Thank goodness it’s Netflix. They made ASOUE.
Micah, Disney DID make LLW and Prince Caspian, and while they did indeed insert some people of color in the background (which I had no problem with), they did not do what you describe regarding the Pevensie children. So you’re just trying to stir the pot rather than basing your statements on any kind of reality.
The Disney-owned MCU went for over a decade and 20 films before they even finally got around to having a superhero film with a solo female lead (and that sadly turned out to be the quite mediocre Captain Marvel). If they are trying to be “woke” like you and others complain about, they have been failing MISERABLY at it. Even Joss “girl power” Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) failed to have more than one token female member (non-super-powered) in The Avengers, which I believe was the first film in the MCU produced after Disney purchased Marvel. The other four members of that original cinematic Avengers team were all white dudes. Even Guardians of the Galaxy is made up of majority male characters (though at least it’s not ONE female character like in the first of the trilogy). So what’s this “50% required diversity” you’re going on about? Utter nonsense. You’re going to complain that the *18th* film in the MCU (Black Panther) finally had a black lead? Or the *25th* film in the MCU (Shang-Chi) finally had an Asian lead? (Both of those films were generally excellent, by the way…)