Below is a piece of concept art that NarniaFans came across on Federico D’Alessandro’s website. It appears to show the Lady of the Green Kirtle’s throne room. As for the Lady herself, my guess is they just threw an image of the White Witch in there as a temporary placeholder. Caspian is clearly a placeholder because he is wearing exactly the same armor he wore in Prince Caspian.

10. Lucy and Digory at the Wardrobe (7%)

9. “Try me.” (8%)

8. Train Station, Opening Credits (9%)

7. Arriving at Aslan’s Camp, Meeting Aslan (13%)

6. Meeting Tumnus (16%)

5. Edmund Stabbed, Peter Fights the Witch, Aslan Wins (19%)

4. The Battle of Beruna Begins (20%)

3. Lucy Looks Into a Wardrobe, Discovers Narnia (23%)

2. Aslan’s Resurrection (25%)

1. Coronation at Cair Paravel (25%)

Thanks for voting and happy new year! Further up and further in!

Review by Tirian

You may have noticed that this month NarniaWeb has been featuring ads for Focus on the Family Radio Theatre. I’d like to thank Tyndale House Publishers for supporting NarniaWeb this month and wanted to take the opportunity to tell you a little about the C.S. Lewis works that they are offering.

Focus on the Family Radio Theatre’s Chronicles of Narnia is a full dramatization of each of the seven books in the Narnia series. Each book is told over three hours and has introductions by Douglas Gresham who shares some interesting insights into the story. I’ve listened to all seven of these and they are really good.

Last year I had the opportunity to pick up the dramatized version of The Screwtape Letters. Before reading anything else, watch this clip on YouTube.

Andy Serkis as Wormwood is one of the most inspired casting choices I’ve ever heard. He brings a sense of refined malice to the part which fits perfectly! The dramatization takes what is a primarily theological book and highlights the personal parts of the story. It’s an excellent adaptation which makes the characters believable and thoroughly likeable (not Screwtape, of course) and really drives the story forward. Each chapter takes about 10 minutes which makes for easy listening and allows you to break the story up. If you are listening on an MP3 player you can quickly skip around to different topics. I highly, highly recommend checking out The Screwtape Letters.

Note: The Screwtape Letters might be too intense for the younger ears in your family. There’s scary music, explosions and lots of devilish cackling. Even now, watching the clip above brings chills to my spine.

If you are still looking for a Christmas gift this year, I’d recommend either of these gifts for the C.S. Lewis-lovers in your life. Find out more at Tyndale House Publishers.

To commemorate the film’s anniversary, we are asking NarniaWebbers to vote for their favorite scene in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The poll will close on December 24, and the winner will be revealed on the 31st.

Remember, you have until December 24… so take some time to think it over before voting.

Vote here (If you check more than three scenes, your submission will later be deleted. Please only submit one set of votes).
UPDATE: The poll is closed. Check back on the 31st to see the results.

Q: Did CSLewis believed that other worlds (such as Narnia) may really exist?
DG: Why? Don’t you?

Q: What was the most emotionally difficult part of working on the Chronicles of Narnia films?
DG: The hardest part of working on the Narnia films was having to accept stuff that I knew to be less good than what Jack wrote.

Q: I’m curious about Lewis’s position on anarchy. Would he have considered Jesus to be an anarchist?
DG: No Jesus was purely a Theocrat not an anarchist. Anarchy is for fools and bullies.

Q: Is C.S. Lewis still relevant in the 21st Century? What would he have made of the current financial crisis?
DG:  Like me he would have shaken his head and said “Well here we go again-drat it.”

Q: Did he ever start works of fiction and then scrap them?
DG: Yes, every writer does. Lots of his attempts ended up in the wastepaper basket.

Q:  do you have a personal favorite that he wrote?
DG: Yes, I think the best fictional book he ever wrote was ‘Til We Have Faces.

 Notable Quotes

“Evangelical is far too broad a term and covers a multitude of sins. Jack was a mere Christian, as am I.”

(About the death of Lewis’ wife, Joy) “We grew very close in that time. I leant on him and he had only me to lean on.”

You can see a “replay” of the chat at http://tweetchat.com/room/cslewis.

According to NarniaFans, “Gresham will be tweeting answers to questions and giving insights into Lewis as a man, an author, and a thinker that continues to shape the conversation around faith and life. Ask a question to @CSLEWIS and you could win a C.S. Lewis Boxed Set.”

Please join us for an exciting event with Douglas Gresham on Wednesday.

UPDATE: Follow along here even if you do not have a Twitter account.

While Rilian and glumPuddle hope to do more discussions with the rest of the council on Narnia topics, this will be the last film news discussion for the foreseeable future. In this episode, we discuss the present status of the franchise, share laughs, frustrations, questions and a few last reflections as we conclude this episode. As an era in the podcast concludes, we on the council would like to give a warm and sincere “Thank you” to all our listeners.

To mark the occasion, we are inviting NarniaWebbers to share their first experience with Narnia. When did you discover it? What were your first impressions? How did you become such a big fan? Post your story in the comments section below. Also, check out this brief history of Narnia:

Here are some stories from the staff to start us off:

Tirian:

When I was about four years old I remember seeing “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” sitting on a table in our house. It was the old cover from the 70’s and it really captured my imagination. I really, really wanted to read the story but my parents said I was too young. I think they finally gave in when I was five. Growing up, LWW was one of the first “real” books that I read (well they read it to me) and I just loved it! It really set the stage for my love of literature and Narnia at a very early age.

Starkat:

I have been reading “The Chronicles of Narnia” long enough that I don’t really remember when I got started reading them. I do remember checking out hardback copies from the library when I was pre-teenager. I used to watch the BBC Narnia films with a boy I used to babysit. I also got them from the library originally, but their copies were where I discovered that there was actually a sea serpent scene. As for the radio dramas, I started listening to those as they were released. I also remember going to see a stage version of “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” done with just a handful of props and a handful of people. When the book covers started changing, I had begun to buy my own set of Narnia books so I scrambled to buy a full set. I now have a set of pre-1994 covers in addition to a newer set. Narnia was a part of my childhood and I expect it to be a part of my life for years to come.

DiGoRyKiRkE:

I was introduced to Narnia at age 8. I was in 3rd grade at a Christian school, and our teacher had put LWW on the reading list. She’d read us one chapter per day (to give us a break). I remember feeling as if the story had brought me to life.

I was bullied a lot in school, and so my Mom pulled me out and homeschooled me. I suppose I’d forgotten about that children’s story from so long ago, but one day, while in a Christian bookstore (around age 12 or so), I found the Narnia section. I hadn’t known that there were more books in the series, so I saved up my allowance for weeks so that I could buy a set, and what a change has been made in my life ever since.

Those books were there for me at a time when few other things were. I don’t think people realize just how much they lean on dreams, until they’re forced to wake up and see the harsh truth that life is a cruel place. Narnia was my dream for many many years. It got me through some hard times, put a smile on my face, and brought me to a place like NarniaWeb, which I truly couldn’t imagine living without.

MountainFireflower:

My first ever introduction was through the Focus on the Family radio theater version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I was around 5 or 6, and I remember being read to as well as listening to the radio theater with my dad in the evenings. It was so special to me.

When I got older, I wondered what had happened after the adventures in LWW. At the end of the book, it had said there were more adventures, right? I wasn’t aware that there were more books, so I decided to write my own. I guess you could call them fan fiction. Thankfully, shortly after that, I discovered my dad’s old set of the Chronicles in our basement. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I love how the Chronicles, even though they are children’s books, are really still so relevant. They’ve been such a lovely part of my life, and as weird as it sounds, I’m thankful for Narnia and the way it’s impacted me.

glumPuddle:

My grandfather taught a college course on CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, and Charles Williams, so I always saw Narnia books lying around when I went to his house. I vaguely remember watching bits of the BBC versions and having some of the books read to me when I was little. So, for a long time, Narnia was a blurry but mostly pleasant childhood memory.

One night in early 2001, I had a cold and was unable to sleep. So I got up, walked into the living room, and sat down. There, lying on the end table, was a box set of The Chronicles of Narnia (thankfully, they were in publication order). I casually picked up the first book, “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe,” meaning only to look at the cover to fight boredom, and maybe skim the first page… Before I knew it, hours had gone by and I was still reading. I read the series twice that year. “Wow,” I thought,”These aren’t warm fuzzy kids books after all. They’re actually really good. They’re actually compelling.”

The books bring back the magic and sense of possibility of storytime, and I love Lewis’ ability to take deep concepts and express them very simply. Every time I go back and re-read the series, I see it from a different perspective. I do not think I became a huge fan of the books because they are great reads; I became a fan because they are amazing re-reads… and re-re-reads… and re-re-re-reads…

Only the beginning of the adventures of Narnia!

What’s your story? Post it below!

Paul Martin from NarniaFans.com also appeared on the program!

UPDATE: The full discussion is on iTunes. (Select the first option)

During the negotiations between Fox, Walden, and the C.S. Lewis Estate, the film option that Walden Media owned was allowed to expire and Walden Media no longer has exclusive purchasing rights to any further Narnia films. (What’s the difference between a film option and the film rights? Check out Wikipedia’s article here.) This has been confirmed to us by representatives of the C.S. Lewis Estate.

And while Walden and Fox have confirmed they are both interested in making more Narnia films, our understanding is that, by law, the C.S. Lewis Estate must wait a certain period of time (called a moratorium) before they can sell the film option for the Narnia books again. And when they do, it will be available to any film company out there interested in bidding on it, not just Walden and Fox.

So what does this mean? It means that the ball is entirely in the C.S. Lewis Estate’s court at this point, and they have to wait this mandatory period of time until they can sell the film option again. We here at NarniaWeb don’t know exactly how long this moratorium is, though it is likely several years. What we do know, however, is that Doug Gresham has mentioned many times that it’s his dream to make all seven Narnia books into movies so he probably won’t rest until he’s done that. This is not the end of the Narnia movies! We’re only going to have to wait a while before we see another one.