Believe it or not, the Mark Gordon Company and The C.S. Lewis Company still haven’t closed the book on their Chronicles of Narnia franchise. It’s been five years since Voyage of the Dawn Treader hit theaters, and almost two years since there was any talk about another installment, but today brings a sliver of an update via scribe David Magee’s Twitter account. Via Collider, Magee announced that The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair finally has a script.
Magee’s account is private, but the tweet was brought to the attention of NarniaWeb, which transcribed it as follows:
“Completed the final draft of The Silver Chair today. I’ve had the immense pleasure to work on the project for over a year now. So fulfilling.”
It’s certainly exciting to hear that The Silver Chair hasn’t been forgotten – though all three Narnia films were commercially successful, they were somewhat always contained in Harry Potter‘s shadow and neither of the sequels ever reached the financial peak of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
The Silver Chair, the fourth book in C.S. Lewis’ book series, picks up decades after The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in Narnia, though only one year has passed in England. It follows an older King Caspian who summons the lion Aslan to find his missing son, Prince Rilian, who stands to rule Narnia once Caspian has died. In his infinite wisdom, Aslan calls on English boarding school students Eustace Scrubb (Will Poulter played the role in Voyage of the Dawn Treader) and Jill Poole to find the prince.
When the Walden Group still held rights to the franchise back in 2011, there had been talk of adapting Lewis’ first Narnia installment, a prequel called The Magician’s Nephew, instead, with the idea being to pilot a reboot of the franchise. With word that The Silver Chair is ready to press forward into production, though, it looks like the two companies now at the helm want to stand by the pre-existing universe.
That said, recasting all the major roles save for maybe Liam Neeson’s voicing of Aslan will be necessary, given the “decades later” aspect of the story, so The Silver Chair can still function as a soft reboot of sorts. It will definitely be interesting to see how/if the project shapes up now that Magee has passed in his draft – of course, there could be countless revisions in store, in which case we might not hear about a green light until sometime later this year.
In the meantime, sound off in the comments section. Do you want to see another Narnia movie, or as too much time been allowed to pass between installments?