Big Interview with Douglas Gresham

A gentleman by the name of Ian Kath (who worked on the set of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader as a prop maker) interviewed Doug Gresham a few weeks ago about the Narnia movies. Doug Gresham also talks a good deal about his own life and Christian beliefs. It’s a very long podcast, about an hour long, but here are the highlights that icarus has already transcribed from it (see more on his forum post).

Ian Kath: These movies, how well are they sticking to the originals, the books?

Douglas Gresham: Well, The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe was very close to the original book because the book was written in such a way that lent itself to being transcribed into the film medium. Prince Caspian we had to make some fairly major changes because the book isn’t written that way. In this movie there are a lot of differences in it also to, as Hollywood says, “derive the plot”. I’m ambivalent as to whether they’re necessary or not, I don’t really think so. But thats the way they wanted to do it, and it was either that or not make a movie, so I said “well go ahead and do it”. It will be very interesting to see the audiences reactions.

…..

Ian Kath: It’s an amazing amount of work that we’ve put into this, and I just love what we’ve done, and if the story is as good as the work and the passion that we’ve put into it..

Douglas Gresham: I think the story in the book is better but it’s still a great story.

Ian Kath: I don’t know the story.

Douglas Gresham: You should read it, you should read all of the Narnian chronicles, but yeah I think it’s going to be a great movie. It’s a fabulous movie.

…..

Ian Kath: Is the next one scripted yet?

Douglas Gresham: Oh no no. We haven’t got that far yet. We haven’t even decided exactly which one we are going to do yet. There are several reasons why we would go with The Silver Chair, but then there are other reasons why we might go with something else. One of the reasons for Silver Chair, I’m voting for going with Silver Chair, one of the reasons is that we have found an absolutely fabulous young actor to play Eustace.

There are several more transcribed bits that you can see in icarus’ first post just below this news story. But of course, you’ll want to listen to the whole podcast which can be downloaded on Ian Kath’s website here.

Edited to add: We cannot stress enough the importance of actually listening to the interview. While it may sound like Doug Gresham is unhappy with the way this movie is headed in writing, he sounds VERY excited about the movie when you actually listen to him talking about it.

Huge thanks to icarus for the find!