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In an article featuring Joe Dante (director of Gremlins and Small Soldiers) about films being converted to 3D, Dante mentions Director Michael Apted:

“A lot of directors don’t necessarily want to add 3D, it’s done without their consent,” [Dante] tells me. “My friend Michael Apted just did a Narnia picture, and he was very upset that they insisted that his finished film be turned into 3D, because he had no intention when he was making it of doing it. He said, ‘if I was gonna’ do a 3D movie, I would have done it differently’.

Read the full article here. Thanks to ‘Icarus’ for the find.

Narnia.com has added a new game to the official site for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader called ‘Sword Training’. The object of the game is to guide Reepicheep through the various islands while swinging your ‘sword’ around to cause Reepicheep to run, jump, crawl, and cut down enemies (like barrels).

Click here to try the game out yourself!

Thanks Prince Norin and icarus for the heads up!

NarniaWebber icarus writes:

The November issue of SFX Magazine which was released today, contained a brand new photo from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader! The picture was included in a regular feature they run called “Big Shot”, which as the name suggests is a big photo from a movie, blown-up over a double page spread, with various annotations added explaining what is going on.

The VDT picture they have this month is a shot of a small skirmish between Edmund and Lucy (and possibly Caspian, though he can’t actually be seen in the photo) and some of Gumpas’ men situated in the Bell Tower Set. Here is a photo of the magazine pages so you can see:

You can read the rest of icarus’s report on our forum here (which contains several more potential plot spoilers).

Students living in the United States who are in grades 4-6 can enter Scholastic’s contest to win tickets to the London premiere of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Click here to enter the contest. Thanks to Icarus for the find.

Yesterday, we posted a link to a short video interview with Anna Popplewell (Susan) at the UK premiere of Charlie St. Cloud, where she said: “I’m only in a teenny tiny fraction of [The Voyage of the Dawn Treader]. I just went out basically to do this one scene, and to visit. But it looks like it’s going to be really good, and obviously I’m excited to see it.” (Thanks to ‘Daredevil’ for the find)

Hours later, another short interview popped up on YouTube:

Transcript:

Q: …Looking forward to the new film. What can you tell us?

Anna: I can’t tell you very much because I’m not really in it. My character is not in the book. But if you keep your eyes peeled very carefully, then you might catch a glimpse of me. But I think everyone who I know who is involved with it is really excited about it, and it’s going to be out towards the end of the year.

Q: In the trailer, it looks big.

Anna: Yeah, well they don’t like to muck about with them really, do they? Lots of it is set on a boat this time, so it’s got quite a different look, but it’s still more of the same epic scale.

Q: Were you a bit sad not to be as involved as you were with the other films?
Anna: Yeah, I mean of course, because I had such a good time doing them. But at the same time, it sort of meant that I was allowed to go to university, so it kind of worked out well.

NarniaWebbers have been speculating about Peter and Susan’s role in the film ever since they first appeared on a theater stand in May, and again in trailers. In the book, Peter is busy studying for exams and Susan is in America. Here an an excerpt from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Chapter 1:

Edmund and Lucy did not at all want to come and stay with Uncle Harold and Aunt Alberta. But it really couldn’t be helped. Father had got a job lecturing in America for sixteen weeks that summer, and Mother was to go with him because she hadn’t had a real holiday for ten years. Peter was working very hard for an exam and he was to spend the holidays being coached by old Professor Kirke in whose house these four children had had wonderful adventures long ago in the war years. If he had still been in that house he would have had them all to stay. But he had somehow become poor since the old days and was living in a small cottage with only one bedroom to spare. It would have cost too much money to take the other three all to America, and Susan had gone.

Grown-ups thought her the pretty one of the family and she was no good at school work (though otherwise very old for her age) and Mother said she “would get far more out of a trip to America than the youngsters”. Edmund and Lucy tried not to grudge Susan her luck, but it was dreadful having to spend the summer holidays at their Aunt’s. “But it’s far worse for me,” said Edmund, “because you’ll at least have a room of your own and I shall have to share a bedroom with that record stinker, Eustace.”

So, why are Peter and Susan wearing their Narnian clothes in the trailer? Discuss!

At the UK premiere of Charlie St. Cloud, Anna Popplewell (Susan) was asked about The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. She said: “I’m only in a teenny tiny fraction of it. I just went out basically to do this one scene, and to visit. But it looks like it’s going to be really good, and obviously I’m excited to see it.” View the video here. Thanks to ‘Daredevil’ for the find!

Paul Martin from NarniaFans.com recently got to spend some time on The Matthew of Bristol which has been outfitted as the Dawn Treader. He’s posted a series of reports at NarniaFans.com. You can read the epilogue here and there are links to the other installments at the bottom of the story.

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Our friend Amanda Patchin (200books.com) is starting up a new project to create a searchable database of books that C.S. Lewis owned and read.  She writes “There are very limited resources for the fan or scholar who wants to explore the books this amazing author enjoyed. Himself a lover of books – both the physical objects and the words they contain – Lewis is an incredible resource for the devoted reader. His passion for books is all over his writing. His own library is therefore full of interest to his readers and this project will, in a way, open it to all.” Please read more about the project at kickstarter.com and consider joining me to help get this project off the ground.

Our friend Devin Brown writes a great piece at cslewis.com about the purpose behind the Chronicles of Narnia. C.S. Lewis wrote that “the first qualification for judging any piece of workmanship from a corkscrew to a cathedral is to know what it is–what it was intended to do and how it is meant to be used.” He goes on to talk about Lewis’ intent behind the Chronicles: to provide insight into the human condition and to reveal truths about our life. You can read the whole article here.