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When it was proposed (or mandated) that Skandar and co-stars Will Poulter and
Georgie Henley don a wet suit to earn their scuba PADI (Professional Association of
Diving Instructors) certificate before filming commenced on “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” the teenage trio dove right in, you might say, to yet another adventure and challenge.

The third book in C.S. Lewis’ series begins when the two youngest Pevensies, along with their irritating cousin Eustace, are swallowed into a bedroom wall painting, which depicts a ship sailing on the high seas.

To create the effect of the bedroom flooding with water, the production’s mechanical SFX crew, under the direction of veteran movie magician Brian Cox, and working with Barry Robison’s and Ian Gracie’s crack art department and construction crew, duplicated the sound stage bedroom set on an elevated platform which was then dunked into the smaller of Warner Roadshow’s two exterior studio water tanks. The three actors were then instructed to swim out of the bedroom door and windows to the surface.

Weeks before their scenes were filmed, Keynes, Poulter and Henley underwent a three-day scuba diving course under the supervision of Aussie diving instructor Andrew Allen. The actors trained in a local swimming pool and at sea.

You can say they all took to the lessons like fish to water.

After a relatively short rehearsal period in the studio tanks, filming began on the bedroom water scenes in late July, the first week of production. A short time later, the three young actors dove into a second studio tank, to enact the moments where they surface in the ocean and are saved by Caspian and his crew aboard the Dawn Treader.

You can read the full blog on the official Facebook page here.

Thanks to everybody who sent this spy report in!

Eilonwy19 sent a spy report in saying that the Narnia Exhibition run in Houston, TX has been extended through April 25 due to popular demand. You can check out the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s website for exhibit details here. The exhibit was initially scheduled to move on at the end of January.

We’ve received a lot of inquiries lately asking about release dates for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Today we discovered that IMDb has a few dates up on their page for VDT that you can take a peek at here.

The big ones are France on December 8; Australia, and Germany on December 9; and the USA and the UK on December 10.

While IMDb doesn’t always have 100% accurate information, we’re pretty sure these release dates are correct as they match the release dates Fox set for Avatar (which can be seen here if you wish to compare).

For the record, we checked BoxOfficeMojo to corroborate IMDb, and they do, with one exception. According to BOM, Bulgaria gets the movie on May 7, 2010. We’re pretty sure that’s NOT correct.

There is still no word on the world premiere, but a little birdy tells us it might be in London.

We’ve received a couple spy reports the past two days regarding the song by Evanescence that was originally intended for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Skilletdude writes:

Back in early 2005, we received a Word on the Street about Amy Lee of the rock band Evanescence contributing a song to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. However, this did not happen and was later denied by the film production that the song was even considered which caused a bit of confusion. At any rate, “The Narnia Song” (officially called “Together Again”) was released a day ago to help raise money for the relief effort for the recent tragedy in Haiti.

If you would like a copy of this song, all you have to do is donate just $5 (or more if you wish) to the Haiti relief efforts on the United Nations Foundation’s website here.

We’re also aware of the fact that the song exists on other various websites. We request that you do not post a link to those sites on NarniaWeb as we’re quite certain they’re not legal.

The lyrics to the song can be read in Skilletdude’s post just below this news story.

Thanks to Skilletdude and nikki for the heads-up!

James McAvoy (Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) and his wife Anne-Marie Duff announced today that they are expecting their first child. Congratulations to you both!

There has been a lot of speculation surrounding the young girl (dubbed the MLG/Mysterious Little Girl by fans here at NarniaWeb) called Gael who is apparently the daughter or niece of Rhince in the movie. While we don’t have any new information as to the extent of her role in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we finally have the actress’s name.

She’s being played by a young lady named Arabella Morton from Brisbane Australia.

For those who might have missed it, you can see a snippet of Gael jumping off the side of the Dawn Treader in this clip from YouTube here.

Thanks to Carl for the initial spy report about her name, and also to icarus for helping us verify the information!

NarniaWebber icarus ran across a really interesting interview with Morgan Keavney-Rattue who is the stand-in for Eustace on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. We first reported on Morgan back in early December when he did an interview for The Weekender.

This particular interview with Noosa radio in Australia is really good if you want to know exactly what a stand-in does. There was a lot of confusion as to exactly what a stand-in does when we posted the story on Zak Morcillo who is apparently the stand-in for Peter.

You can listen to the interview on Noosa’s website here (currently the third story down) or you can click on the podcast link below.

 

Download Podcast

Thanks to icarus for the heads-up!

MundoNarnia.com has new pictures of Will Poulter and Howard Berger on the set. Is that Andrew Adamson sitting behind Will? View them here (scroll down).

Box Office Mojo has a new poll asking which movie people think will make it to the top of the box office heap. Voyage of the Dawn Treader is on their list. You can vote here. You must register to vote. Other movies listed range from Iron Man 2 to Toy Story 3.

Thanks to Lamppostshines for the heads up!

NarniaWebber White Wizards informs us that the Australian version of Empire Magazine also has an article on the upcoming films of 2010, which includes The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. However, this is not the same article we reported on a few days ago. It includes one spoiler in a quote from Michael Apted.

White Wizard writes:

The most interesting bits are a quote from Apted and the cost of the Dawn Treader ship, which was $2.3 million. I have never read this quote from Apted but it is quite interesting:

“This is a lot more psychological; it’s not a big action movie. There are a lot of different locations and adventures but, apart from a huge battle at the end with a sea serpent and a dragon, this is a character story. The quality of the book, and the appeal of the book, is that it’s more of an emotional than a swashbuckling adventure.”

There are definitely a lot of positive lines here, like “not a big action movie” and “a character story.” But I’m sure that the bit that will leave everybody talking is the line “a huge battle at the end with a sea serpent and a dragon.” Is this dragon Eustace? If so, did they move Dragon Island to the end of the movie? Or just the bit where Eustace turns back into a boy? Only 11 months of speculating to go!

Thanks to White Wizard for the report!

UPDATE: White Wizard has provided us with the transcript of the article. It can be seen on our forum here.