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Running time: 56 minutes

Rilian and Dr. Ransom discuss the climax of the film with the Dawn Treader’s encounter with Dark Island and the sea serpent. Leaving aside the discussion of the undragonning until the next episode, Ransom and Rilian come at this scene with passion, energy and (naturally) silliness.

Retraction: In this episode, Rilian and Ransom mistakenly assume that Lucy replies to the MLG with “I want to be just like you” when in actuality her response is closer to “I think you should be just like you.” Due to the film no longer showing in our local theatres, we depend more and more upon memories and our notes as to what was said and done, and alas, these methods are not foolproof. We apologize for the error and will be using the DVD when it comes out to refresh our memories.

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Many fans were puzzled when it was announced that the DVD/Blu-ray release of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader will include an “animated short film.” Last week, AOL Kids posted a clip. View the video here.

Animated Pauline Baynes illustrations are used as Caspian’s narration fills in the gap a bit between Prince Caspian and Dawn Treader.  Strangely, images from a few different Narnia books are shown, including The Horse and His Boy.

The DVD/Blu-ray releases on Friday, April 8.

Georgie Henley (Lucy) was asked about The Magician’s Nephew at the Empire Awards on Sunday. You can view the video here (Georgie’s interview begins at 0:50)

GH: “I really have no idea what’s going on with the Narnia franchise. … [Will Poulter and I] won’t be in The Magician’s Nephew, but I know that our characters are in some of the franchise, an older generation. So I wonder what will happen there, I don’t really know.”

DS: Maybe a flashback or flashforward or something?

GH: “A little cameo would be nice, it would be good.”

C.S. Lewis actually included a few “flashforwards” in The Magician’s Nephew, and one of them mentioned Lucy:

The lamp-post which the Witch had planted (without knowing it) shone day and night in the Narnian forest, so that the place where it grew came to be called Lantern Waste; and when, many years later, another child from our world got into Narnia, on a snowy night, she found the light still burning. And that adventure was, in a way, connected with the ones I have just been telling you.

–The Magician’s Nephew, Ch. 15

It will be interesting to see if The Magician’s Nephew film ever flashes forward to footage from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And, if they ever make The Silver Chair, there is always the possibility that the filmmakers will give Lucy and Edmund cameos, just as they did with Peter and Susan in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Of course, Lucy and Edmund appear in The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle.

To all of you young ladies who have been emailing us begging for advice on how to audition for Polly Plummer in The Magician’s Nephew, this story is for you! Tony Nixon, who played Rynelf in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, has typed a really cool blog offering advice to aspiring actors and actresses who want to be in future Narnia films.

When a film is cast it is the job of the casting director(s) to find suitable applicants to audition. Every now and then we might see a “worldwide campaign” to find the next (insert stars name here) and thousands of young hopefuls lined up around the block to get seen. But honestly I can’t remember the last time this happened. It’s not practical and is time consuming. Usually the method is this.

1) A casting brief is sent out to Actors agents (possibly worldwide, but for smaller roles usually in the country where most of the filming will take place) this brief will contain details of the role. A Character description, Age, Gender and any physical traits etc, ethnicity.

2) The Actors agents then submit Actors they represent that they think might be suitable for the role. Occasionally an Actor may hear through the grapevine of a role and ask his/her Agent to submit them for it.

3) The casting director (s) will decide who they want to see for Auditions. The director may also be involved in seeing the selection of reduced candidates. Now they may ask to see you on a show-reel (DVD) or they may ask to audition you straight away, it varies. For overseas jobs I have sent show-reels and audition tapes.

4) IF you get an audition you may get the role or you may just go through to “Call back” auditions and have to audition again.

To read Tony’s full blog, you can check it out here.

The Christian Post caught up with Micheal Flaherty to talk to him about the future of the Narnia films. Flaherty confirmed that Walden plans to make The Magician’s Nephew as the fourth Narnia movie (which we already knew) and that they’re currently in talks with Fox and the C.S. Lewis Estate about it.

But what was interesting was one of the reasons he listed as to why they were making The Magician’s Nephew next instead of The Silver Chair.

Looking ahead, Walden Media believes The Magician’s Nephew has the potential to be a blockbuster hit like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe because it is the second most popular book in the Narnia series.

Flaherty explained that box office performance for Narnia films appears to mimic the amount of people’s interest in the books.

“What’s interesting is that the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe over this period of time sold twice as many books as Prince Caspian and it did twice as much at the box office. Prince Caspian sold a third of the books as Dawn Treader and did a third at the box office,” he noted.

“So while it’s not always a correlation between books to film, so far with these first three films, it has been.”

The full story is available here.

From HomeMediaMagazine.com:

To promote the April 8 DVD and Blu-ray Disc release of The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment is teaming up with Macy’s Flower Show at Herald Square in New York City.

A garden inspired by the film will be open free to the public from March 27 to April 10, and a special family day will take place April 9 at 2 p.m. Macy’s customers who make a purchase of more than $50 in the childrens section with receive a Narnia goodie bag with a copy of the newly-released The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader DVD. Family day activities include activity stations, coloring stations and readings from the book.

The full story is available here.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that The Voyage of the Dawn Treader‘s foreign box office total has exceeded $300m:

But the movie has only grossed $107.3 million in the U.S. and Canada. That’s less than the last two “Narnia” movies, 2005′s “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and 2008′s “Prince Caspian,” which collected $291.7 million and $141.6 million domestically, respectively.

The first film did fantastically overseas, ending up with $453.3 million. But the third film has already exceeded the international total of “Prince Caspian,” which only took in $278 million in the foreign markets where it played.

“Dawn Treader” has performed well in France, Russia, the United Kingdom and Japan, where despite local tragedy the film grossed $1.4 million this weekend.

These numbers indicate that the film’s worldwide box office total is over $407m, still short of Prince Caspian‘s $420m.

Running time: 39:45
Rilian and Gymfan15 pick up where glumPuddle and Dr. Elwin Ransom left off and discuss the campfire scene, Reep’s relationship with Eustace and Ramandu/Liliandil’s island.

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New The Voyage of the Dawn Treader behind-the-scenes videos can now be downloaded for free on iTunes (the second video, “Making a Scene,” was released back in December). Download the videos here.

1. In Character with Georgie Henley
2. Making a Scene
3. In Character with Liam Neeson
4. Direct Effect: Michael Apted

You can also view the videos on YouTube: (1) (2) (3) (4)

The video about Michael Apted is probably the most interesting. He talks about the elements they injected into VDT’s plot:

“[VDT] is a sort of double adventure story. It’s an exciting chase for clues as to who is about to attack Narnia. But underneath that, there’s another journey which is into your own self. To find out who you are, what you’re made of, and whether you’re worthy to be what you are.”

“The book was very difficult to transfer onto a screenplay. It’s full of wonderful incidents, hopping from island to island which is wonderful as a bedtime book. [...] It doesn’t necessarily have to follow on with great urgency, but in a movie that’s a death. A movie has to have a drive, has to have a motor. And there wasn’t really a motor in the book, so we sort of had to find a way to put one in. And the way we did it was entirely honorable because we looked forward into the next book, Silver Chair, and found there was a big chunk of that missing. For example, SC is about Narnia being attacked from the underground, but there is no mention ever of how these people get into the underground, how these people are kidnapped and sent underground to prepare for war against Narnia. So, that’s the element we injected into VDT to give it a kind of thrust to give it a slightly stronger sense of dramatic purpose than the book has.”

–Director Michael Apted

Of course, the big question fans are asking now is whether or not they will ever be able to connect this element to “The Silver Chair.” Right now, it is almost certain that if they make another Narnia film, it will be “The Magician’s Nephew.”

From The Hollywood Reporter:

20th Century Fox reported that The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader — which had been having a triumphant Japan run at the conclusion of a lengthy overseas campaign — managed to draw $1.49 million from 548 locations, with most of the business coming from southern Japan. Treader has pulled nearly $19 million out of Japan since opening there on Feb. 25. The film’s overseas cume stands at $298 million.

And with that, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has surpassed the $400 million worldwide mark.

The current box office estimates are:
Domestic: $104mil
Foreign: $298 mil
Worldwide: $402mil