The pressure on film franchises to perform at box offices at Harry Potter-levels is immense, as anything less than billions spells the end of a series. The Chronicles of Narnia franchise faced cancellation after the second film underperformed, until a new studio revived the third installment. Adapting beloved books into films is difficult, as audiences now expect films to appeal to all ages and demographics. Debate surrounds whether big budgets help or hurt a film's creative vision and commercial success.

1. From Harry Potter to Narnia: the
pressure on film franchises to perform
In the world of film franchises, it's billions or bust – anything less
than Harry Potter-style success spells the end for a series. Cath
Clarke reports on how Narnia went to the brink
Cath Clarke
The Guardian, Thursday 9 December 2010 22.59 GMT
Dumped, downsized, delayed ... The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Photograph: 20th

2. Century Fox
The omens suggest there may be a happy ending in sight in the saga of the Narnia
franchise. Last week snow was falling – as if Aslan himself had ordered it – as The
Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third in the Chronicles of Narnia series, was
premiered as the royal film performance. (Rumour has it the Queen shed a tear or two;
maybe it was from relief – last year she had to sit through The Lovely Bones.) But in
2008 it was different story: it looked like curtains for Narnia after Disney
unceremoniously dumped the series – disappointed with the performance of film No 2,
Prince Caspian. Production of Dawn Treader was downsized, then delayed; for a while
it looked likely that it wouldn't get made at all, and the projected seven-film series
would be cut off at the ankles.
It wasn't the first high-profile franchise to be rejected by its parent studio. A year
earlier, the planned trilogy of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials was canned after the
first film, The Golden Compass, failed to live up to expectations at the US box-office.
To the casual observer, neither Caspian nor Compass looks much like a failure: both
took hundreds of millions of dollars. But there is no margin for error in the new
generation of multi-film, factory-line franchises – with their whopping CGI bills and
budgets that would keep a despot in military trifles. Get it right, like Harry Potter
($6bn and counting) or Twilight ($1.7bn), and it's golden. But films have to match those
takings to have got it right. Anything less is a failure.
Franchises have been around longer than Bond has been bothering blondes, or Dracula
has been sucking blood. What has changed is that now Hollywood studios are
desperately seeking properties to nail their sails to, committing upfront – in theory at
least – to making a string of films. Mike Goodridge, editor of the film industry paper
Screen International, compares new-formula franchises such as Harry Potter and
Twilight to Saturday morning serials, with storylines that run like a thread through the

3. movies: "It's a dream situation for a studio to have a captive audience, which will
inevitably come back for the next helping." As Harry Potter and Twilght grind to a
close, eyes are on the next prize: which might just be Suzanne Collins's postapocalyptic teen trilogy The Hunger Games; Kaya Scodelario and Chloe Moretz are in
the running for the lead.
"If you can pull them off, they are a license to print money," says director Michael
Apted. He has been on the other side, too – he was already hard at work on The Dawn
Treader when Disney pulled the plug. Did he think it was all over? "For a bit."
What's Apted's verdict on Prince Caspian – the film that prompted Disney to bail? "I
don't think it did go wrong. I don't think it was messed up. I just think they just took it
for granted they were on to a successful franchise like Lord of the Rings." In reality,
adapting CS Lewis is a trickier proposition than Tolkien or JK Rowling. Each of the
seven Narnia titles is its own universe, with a changing cast of characters. "Prince
Caspian is much darker than the first book," says Apted. There was less of the wonder
and magic of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe; it was bigger and scarier, with
two monster battles. With The Dawn Treader, Apted says he has gone back to Narnia
basics with a fairytale adventure on the high seas, featuring a stonking comic turn by
17-year-old Will Poulter as cousin Eustace.
In 2008, after Disney backed out, a replacement studio, Fox, was found within a
month. Still, Apted must have felt like he was captaining a sinking ship. "It was
daunting. We were put in the position that we had to retrieve the franchise, both in
terms of tone – to make it more family-friendly – and to do it for less money." If
appearances are anything to go by, he is exactly the man you'd want in a crisis. A 69year-old veteran (his credits include Enigma and The World is Not Enough), he is dry
as bone and seemingly unflappable. His budget was shrunk to $140m. Which is still a
scary amount of money ("well, you don't think about that").

4. How poorly, exactly, did Prince Caspian perform? It went to No 1 in the US, and was
Disney's second most successful film of 2008. "When you do the math, it doesn't look
quite so pretty," says Apted. "The second film cost more and made less." He's right:
Prince Caspian took $420m worldwide. It cost $225m to make, and the same again to
market. By comparison The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe took $745m, having
been made for $180m.
There was another layer of intrigue to the saga: bad blood between Disney and Walden
Media, the company that holds the rights to the Narnia books and which co-financed
and co-produced the movies, and which is owned by Phil Anschutz, a billionaire
conservative Christian. Apted describes a situation in which everybody was blaming
everybody else: "There was a lot of ill feeling. I think that poisoned the water a bit."
If $420m in box office receipts isn't enough to secure the future of a franchise, how
much is? These days $1bn is the new benchmark for a bona-fide smash (though only
seven films so far have made that much). What that means for audiences is that if you
have a pulse you are in the target demographic. Here's Screen International's Mike
Goodridge again: "I hate to say it, but with these films you have to hit what the studios
call the 'four quadrant market': men, women, young and old. You have to hit everybody
and then you have a genuine phenomenon."
Prince Caspian, it was thought, pandered too much to teenage boys. Fox and Walden
took no chances with The Dawn Treader. Earlier this year Christian leaders and
assorted CS Lewis experts were invited to a "Narnia Summit" in LA. "We went through
every line of dialogue and every scene with them to make sure it was a really faithful
adaptation," Walden Media's president Michael Flaherty told Christianity Today at the
time.
One obvious solution, surely, would be to make the movies more cheaply. No, says
Michael Apted. While he was happy to trim the budget of The Dawn Treader ("I wanted

5. to make sure the technology didn't overwhelm the emotion of the film"), he says
swingeing cuts to fantasy films are out of the question. "If you penny pinch, you're
dead. Audiences are so savvy, and if you do it on the cheap you're out of it."
One person who disagrees wholeheartedly with that is Philip Pullman, whose His Dark
Materials books looked set to become another major franchise. When New Line
Cinema – which was behind The Lord of the Rings – filmed the first instalment, it was
the most expensive movie it had ever made. Released under the book's US title, The
Golden Compass, it did roaring business overseas, but just $70m in the US – and
because New Line had sold overseas rights to the film in order to fund the production,
it didn't make its money back on the international box office. It was a crucial failure for
New Line, which was absorbed into its parent company, Warner Bros, shortly
afterwards.
Pullman reckons we are now seeing diminishing returns from CGI. "We don't believe it
any more. Or we know that it's only computers." If there were ever to be a Golden
Compass remake, he has an entirely different film in mind. "I would rather it was made
in someone's shed with tin cans and bits of rope. I think it would be more involving –
to be made for about 10 quid, rather than $200m."
Talk to Pullman and you get an impression of the head of steam that builds behind a
mega-budget franchise. He was delighted with the young actress Dakota Blue Richards,
who was cast as his 12-year-old heroine Lyra ("she was absolutely terrific"). The filmmakers looked at 10,000 girls before finding her. But she would be too old for the part
if the His Dark Materials franchise was resurrected. "They would have to recast. It's
lost really. It's gone." (Makers of franchises featuring kid actors have to move quickly –
the little blighters have a habit of getting bigger.)
The curious case of The Golden Compass's poor US performance has been widely put

6. down to the controversy surrounding its anti-religious themes. Though fudged
somewhat in the film itself, the outcry from the Catholic League ("atheism for kids")
and the rest may have been fatal. "The Golden Compass didn't hit America's heartland,
and that's what killed it, really," says Goodridge. Pullman says: "It was always going to
be a difficult film for that reason. The only way to do it is to take the issue bravely to
the front and wave it like a banner."
When studios first looked at his trilogy, did they assume they had the next Lord of the
Rings on their hands? "Oh they always think X is the next Y," Pullman says. "They have
no idea at all about looking forward. Publishers are just the same. They can only see
what's coming in terms of what's been. Nobody was looking for the first Harry Potter,
only JK Rowling. Studio and publishers: I don't rate them very highly as originators or
visionaries."
And it's not just writers like Pullman who believe there is a failure of imagination at
work. Here's Goodridge: "The problem with Hollywood at the moment is that they
need an identifiable brand before they go into an expensive movie production. Which is
a problem for creativity." So while there are trend-bucking examples in the system –
the auteur-cleverness of Christopher Nolan's brooding Batman movies, for one –
overall we're looking at reboot ad nauseum: Superman again, a Spider-Man rework.
Says Goodridge: "It's no secret. Hollywood is scrabbling to put on the screen
properties people already know. They can't take a risk on original ideas any more."
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