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Empire has uploaded a video of parts of their interview with Ben Barnes and Michael Apted from this past weekend. It only covers a few of the questions asked, so there’s nothing new. But what wasn’t obvious in the written interview is a little kid asks one of the questions and it’s just hysterical.

The video is available here. The full written interview is here.

UPDATE: icarus has pointed out to us that if you click the menu button on the bottom right of the video, you can see two more parts of the interview. Thanks icarus!

Sony Pictures announced today that they will open The Tourist, a romantic thriller starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, on Dec. 10 — the same day The Voyage of the Dawn Treader opens in theaters in the USA. The Fighter, starring Christian Bale, Mark Wahlberg, and Amy Adams opens the same day. The full press release is available here.

Our friend Devin Brown has written a character profile article in conjunction with Operation Narnia (the campaign to shoeboxes for needy kids around the world). Brown’s article is titled “C. S. Lewis’s Message in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” and highlights four characters to watch in the upcoming film: Eustace, Reepicheep, Aslan, and Lucy.

Jesus explained to his followers that He came to seek and to save those who are lost. And like Edmund early in the first story, Eustace is a young boy who is definitely on the wrong path. In fact when we meet him, Eustace has been on the wrong path for so long that he can see no other—in his eyes, he does no wrong. Edmund refers to his cousin as a “record stinker” and this is putting Eustace’s spiritual condition mildly.

Friends? Lewis tells us he has none. Happiness? Eustace knows only one kind: bossing and bullying others, provided they are either smaller or weaker than he is or too good to fight back. But even while Eustace is this record stinker, Aslan loves him and will not abandon him to a life which leads to misery in the short term and to destruction in the end. Through a magical painting which comes to life at just the right moment, much as the wardrobe did, Eustace is brought kicking and complaining into Narnia.

Click here to read the whole post (it’s fantastic!)

Devin Brown has also posted a second post about the Christian themes in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Read here.

And don’t forget to start working on your shoeboxes!

Shockya.com has a story on three new pictures from the filming of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The only thing is, they’re not new. At least not for all of the Narnia fans following Dawn Treader news since last year.

All three images are in our gallery and have been since they were sent to us by Tamara when she snapped them last September. But it’s always nice to bring them up again for those who may not have been around or forgotten about them, so here they are…

And if you want to see more, we have a LOT more. Go check out our Filming Locations gallery here.

The Official Facebook page for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is reporting that Narnia.com is being featured on MyJellyBean.com. You can check it out here.

Digital Spy brings us the following news: The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader has been selected for this year’s Royal Film Performance.

The third big screen adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s fantasy saga will get its world premiere in the presence of members of the Royal Family and the movie’s cast and crew in late November.

Dawn Treader is the second movie in the Narnia franchise to be screened for royalty following The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe in 2005. It will also mark the first time a Royal Performance has been shown in 3D.

The annual premieres are the principal fundraising events for The Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund, the trade charity for UK film and TV industries. Previous selections include The Lovely Bones, A Bunch Of Amateurs and Casino Royale.

Click here to read the whole story.

This weekend at Movie-Con, Empire sat down with director Michael Apted and Ben Barnes to chat for a little bit about The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Here are some highlights…

This was my favourite book, says our Dan Jolin. This is the Sinbad one – is that what you’ve gone for?
Apted: “Yes, it is a journey, it is an adventure. They aren’t in Narnia at all. The whole film is a voyage, which is a tough thing to pull off, to keep the energy going from island to island.

Barnes: “It was my favourite book too because it has that voyage element to it, like Sinbad or Jason And the Argonauts. We’ve gone slightly bigger than those films though. It’s not a papier mache dragon this time – although there was a very large papier mache rock at one point.

Apted: “Don’t tell them everything!”

The film changed studio after you joined, Michael – how did it change?
Apted: “It’s been a long journey; we deliver the film in December but I’ll have been on it by then for three and a half years. I was hired while Andrew Adamson was stil making the second one, so he couldn’t have done it, because it’s not like Potter; each is a different world so you can’t do them back to back. We then faced a world of economic problems and we thought we were dead in the water, but Fox came aboard and then we started. We shot in Australia and now we’re finishing here.

How was it returning to play Caspian, Ben?
Barnes: “While it was very frustrating for everyone else, it was quite nice for me to have a break between the first and this and do other things, and then come back to it with my favourite story, a fresh studio and a fresh director. And playing a king this time, someone who’s been in authority for several years – which is very different to playing someone who’s running away ALL THE TIME. I think when you’re dealing with books based on children’s literature, you have to deal with nostalgia and so on, which is why people balk at remakes and so on, but when you have a new director you can reimagine parts of it as you see fit, which is nice.”

In the trailer, there are people in the film who don’t feature in the book. Is that the case? Peter and Susan aren’t in the book.
Apted: “That’s a nice little surprise for you in the film. It doesn’t go against the book but it’s a nifty little idea in the film. They came back for a couple of days, and it doesn’t really impinge on the story but it’s a nice little grace note.”

Would the Magician’s Nephew ever get made?
Apted: “I can’t answer that – Mark can.

Barnes: “He says they thought they’d start with the best known one since that would sell the most tickets…”

Mark: “We thought we’d start with the four Pevensie children. The question now is, for the fourth film, do we go to the Silver Chair or go back to The Magician’s Nephew?”

Barnes: “Am I in either of those?”

Mark: “In the Silver Chair briefly, as a very old man.

Would you be back for that, Michael?
Apted: “I’d want a break, but sure. Each of these has a very different feel, it’s like Bond. There’s a set of rules for each one, but the difference between each is vast. For a director, this is a much more challenging franchise than even the Potters. There, it’s the same people getting older, so you don’t feel you’ll be repeating yourself.

Ben, would you go back?
Barnes: “Yes, but I want a crack at playing him at 70, that’d be fun. Unless it’s 3 hours every day in make-up. But they were three and a half years, so they do encompass a lot of your world and they mean a lot to you.

The full interview is available on Empire’s website here. It’s about halfway down the page.

Thanks to DamselJillPole for the heads-up!

Thus far, the competition to win a trip aboard the Matthew (decked out as the Dawn Treader) has been held in Italy and France. Now it’s open to kids and teens in the UK.

To win a week’s sailing on the magnificent ship The Matthew, off the magical coast of Cornwall, for you and an adult, all you have to do is answer the question [provided]. The competition is open to 10-16 year olds , and you must be able to travel between 30th Aug and 6th Sept 2010 and as it’s being filmed you must agree to be filmed and appear on Five TV. Not only that but we’re also throwing in two tickets to the The Voyage of the Dawn Treader film premiere! But hurry up as the closing date is 22nd August 2010.

The competition is being done in association with Channel 5 news. The official website to enter is here and the Channel Five news website for the competition is here. Good luck to everyone who enters!

Thanks to daredevil for the heads up!

After reporting on the first book covers appearing online for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie tie-ins, we received a couple spy reports of more covers on other websites. Here they are…

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: Quest for the Lost Lords (I Can Read Book 2)
Available for pre-order here. Original book cover image is here.

Quest for the Lost Lords

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: Aboard the Dawn Treader (I Can Read Book 2)
Available for pre-order here. Original book cover image is here.

Aboard the Dawn Treader

Chronicles of Narnia Movie Tie-in Box Set The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Available for pre-order here. Original book cover image is here.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Themed Box Set

Special thanks to Meadow and dragonking33 for the heads up!

Yes, the game Supply Search has been available for a few days now on Narnia.com. But only just today was I able to get it to work to report on it (and even so, I was only able to get it to work on Firefox).
The game is accessible by sailing to the Magician’s Island and clicking on Lucy’s figure as she enters the Magician’s House.

There are four different images from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and in each one you have to spot differences before you can move on. And of course, that gets harder with each picture.
Here is a direct link to the game and thanks so much for everybody that sent in spy reports!