Posted on 06/28/2005 11:19:26 AM PDT by JDBrown90
In a marriage of modern mythmakers, the Walt Disney Co. is marketing a film based on C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. And in doing so, Disney will take a page from Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Walt Disney Pictures/Walden Media Disney's adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia follows the exploits of four children in World War II England who enter the imaginary world of Narnia through a magical wardrobe.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, based on Lewis' novel for children and Christian allegory, will be released Dec. 9.
For Disney, the Christian marketing campaign represents a sharp break with corporate policy. Apart from Disney World's annual Nights of Joy concerts, the film is the company's first undertaking with the religious community. For some evangelical leaders, it represents the effective end of their Disney boycott.
The entertainment giant, which bills itself as a "Magic Kingdom," has carefully avoided religion for most of its history. Yet Disney has launched a 10-month campaign aimed at evangelical Christians to build support for Narnia, a $100 million, live-action and computer-generated animated feature it is co-producing with Walden Media.
Disney has hired several Christian marketing groups to handle the film, including Motive Marketing, which ran the historic, grass-roots efforts for The Passion. That film has grossed $611 million worldwide and is now in re-release. "From a marketing point of view, it could be a marriage made in heaven � if the movie is any good," says Adele Reinhartz, professor of religion at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada.
Dr. Armand Nicholi, who for decades has taught a Harvard seminar on C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud, agrees. The entertainment world realizes there's a big audience "that embraces a spiritual world view," he says. How well these groups interact "will determine how successful this marriage is."
Paul Lauer, founder of Motive Marketing, declined to comment on his campaign for Narnia, apart from confirming that his firm is handling it.
"Disney, as the consummate corporate animal, is looking at Paul as the guy who delivered the audience of The Passion," says Barbara Nicolosi, of Act One, a program designed to bring Christian writers and executives into the entertainment industry.
Another Christian firm, Grace Hill Media, also has been hired, and several groups have joined the marketing effort. For instance, the Christian Web site hollywoodjesus.com launched a special feature on its site recently devoted to The Chronicles of Narnia.
For its part, Disney is trying to play down the Christian marketing approach, noting that it will reach out to the science-fiction and fantasy communities, as well.
"We don't want to cater to one fan base over the other, or at the expense of another," says Dennis Rice, Disney's senior vice president for public relations.
Failed boycott Leaders of the religious boycott, launched with great fanfare in the 1990s, accused Disney of betraying its family-values legacy by providing health benefits to same-sex partners, allowing Gay Days at theme parks and producing controversial movies, books and TV programming through Disney subsidiaries.
Financial analysts said the boycott had no effect on Disney's bottom line. The Disney-Narnia campaign appears to acknowledge implicitly that the Disney boycott has been a failure.
One of the groups that led the boycott, Colorado-based Focus on the Family, has been included in the early stages of the marketing campaign.
The 16.3 million-member Southern Baptist Convention officially ended its eight-year Disney boycott this week at the denomination's annual meeting.
Bob Waliszewski, the head of teen ministries for Focus, attended a Disney presentation for Narnia at the Burbank studio.
"We have still told families there are disappointing elements at Disney," he says. "We haven't changed that disappointment in Disney. But with Eisner leaving, we're all hoping that Disney will be a better company."
Disney chief executive officer Michael Eisner plans to retire Sept. 30.
For its part, Disney is circumspect about the boycott's apparent end.
"I don't think that this movie is being done as a response to earlier criticism of the company," says Rice. "We think it's a terrific property that's going to make a terrific movie."
Some evangelical critics are not willing to abandon the boycott.
"The departure of the prickly, anti-Christian Michael Eisner, and the advent of the Narnia project might open lines that could lead to a new understanding," says Bob Knight of Concerned Women for America. "Political realities are catching up to Disney, as well, as wiggle room disappears in the culture war."
Best seller Since it was published in the 1950s, Lewis' Narnia series has sold 85 million copies worldwide. Disney's animated features have been international staples for nearly 75 years.
In the Narnia story, a lion named Aslan is a Christ-like figure who offers himself as a sacrifice to save another character. He is tortured and killed.
Then later he is resurrected to transform Narnia into a heaven on Earth.
So far, small groups of Christian leaders and opinion makers from Western states have been invited to Disney's Burbank studios for briefings and screenings of sequences from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Ted Baehr, founder of the Christian-oriented Movie Guide, called the presentation a "wonderful dog-and-pony show. I think they're going to do a great job marketing to the church."
Baehr is author of the forthcoming overview of Lewis' work, Narnia Beckons: C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe � and Beyond, which is being published by an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.
There is reason for skepticism about how Lewis, who is beloved by Christians for his religious commitment and his influential collection of essays, Mere Christianity, will be treated in popular culture.
Memo revealed In 2001, HarperCollins, the U.S. publishers of the Narnia books, issued an internal memo � revealed by the New York Times � in which executives urged colleagues to downplay the books' religious dimensions to market them to a mainstream audience.
Any efforts to de-emphasize the religious aspects of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe film are bound to backfire with Christians, according to Take One's Nicolosi.
"Disney and (co-producer) Walden Media are aware that there's a proprietary sense about The Chronicles of Narnia," she says. "C.S. Lewis is our guy. They better not take that away from us." The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, based on Lewis' novel for children and Christian allegory, will be released Dec. 9.
For Disney, the Christian marketing campaign represents a sharp break with corporate policy. Apart from Disney World's annual Nights of Joy concerts, the film is the company's first undertaking with the religious community. For some evangelical leaders, it represents the effective end of their Disney boycott.
The entertainment giant, which bills itself as a "Magic Kingdom," has carefully avoided religion for most of its history. Yet Disney has launched a 10-month campaign aimed at evangelical Christians to build support for Narnia, a $100 million, live-action and computer-generated animated feature it is co-producing with Walden Media.
Disney has hired several Christian marketing groups to handle the film, including Motive Marketing, which ran the historic, grass-roots efforts for The Passion. That film has grossed $611 million worldwide and is now in re-release. "From a marketing point of view, it could be a marriage made in heaven � if the movie is any good," says Adele Reinhartz, professor of religion at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada.
Dr. Armand Nicholi, who for decades has taught a Harvard seminar on C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud, agrees. The entertainment world realizes there's a big audience "that embraces a spiritual world view," he says. How well these groups interact "will determine how successful this marriage is."
Paul Lauer, founder of Motive Marketing, declined to comment on his campaign for Narnia, apart from confirming that his firm is handling it.
"Disney, as the consummate corporate animal, is looking at Paul as the guy who delivered the audience of The Passion," says Barbara Nicolosi, of Act One, a program designed to bring Christian writers and executives into the entertainment industry.
Another Christian firm, Grace Hill Media, also has been hired, and several groups have joined the marketing effort. For instance, the Christian Web site hollywoodjesus.com launched a special feature on its site recently devoted to The Chronicles of Narnia.
For its part, Disney is trying to play down the Christian marketing approach, noting that it will reach out to the science-fiction and fantasy communities, as well.
"We don't want to cater to one fan base over the other, or at the expense of another," says Dennis Rice, Disney's senior vice president for public relations.
And Aldous Huxley IIRC
If Disney is true to form, the book will remain better. I hardly trust Disney to properly express theology as understood by C.S. Lewis. Everything biblical teaches us to consider our citizenship as above, and not to cling to this fleeting, failing world we hold so dearly by nature. As others have said, Disney is in this for the money. They certainly do not have the innocent suffering and death of Christ for the sin of the world at heart. If any spiritual good comes of this movie it will be by accident. Either way, history will run its course. Christ and His Church will prevail.
Goes without saying, and it's not just Disney.
Disney is in this for the money. They certainly do not have the innocent suffering and death of Christ for the sin of the world at heart.
True, true.
But the "heaven on earth" part could still be a misunderstanding in the article.
I monitor my minor children's communications because I the mom and it's what my husband pays me the big bucks for (not).
I would expect my husband to have enough respect for my spiritual integrity and maturity as well as intellectual capacity to deem it unnecessry.
My wife is an adult and handles her own E-mail. My daughter is almost an adult -- 18 in less than 2 weeks -- and does the same. They're capable of handling anything that I'm not.... My wife probably more so than I, given her life experience, before we met. My son is 9 and gets guidance.
Depends on how much control Disney imposes over it. C.S. Lewis's family has been involved in the production, with his stepson as co-producer, so there is hope it will be reasonably loyal.
My husband and I check our teenage daughter's e-mail from time to time. I also sometimes check her web posts, just as a precaution, although she is quite discerning and lets me know if she has any interactions she finds uncomfortable. We trust her intentions, but not always her judgment.
My husband will sometimes look over my shoulder at FR and say, "HuH?" which is a signal that he'd like me to pay more attention to real life :-). And I will talk to him about any exchanges that disturb me.
Could it be that this family is ok with what they do? I'm sure their website provokes alot of people to send them alot of evil stuff.
I'm sure they're "ok with what they do," even if it includes gratuitous insults to "red neck Baptist preachers," who will then send them "evil stuff."
His writing style is standard crackpot issue (there's a reason nutters tend to all write the same, having to do with the brain problems that contribute to their obsessions and disorganized thought processes). They latch onto an idea and everything else becomes subordinate to it
For instance "To begin with, "arslan" is said to be the Turkish word for "lion," and the most likely source for the name Aslan" the writer is being clever with you because "arslan" is Swedish for A**hole while "Aslan" is a direct translation of Turkish for lion. He has lied to you about the meaning of a word in order to perpetrate a vulgar joke that amuses him at the expense of the truth. He assumes his target audience will be too stupid to catch it.
Now that I have exposed one blatant and vulgar lie will you reconsider taking this man's writings for the slightly schizophenic, obsessed drivel that it is?
I threw away the tape days before I ever read that information because I could tell it wasn't an allegory to the Gospel and I wasn't going to present a lie to my grandkids. And I agree that the site that had the info has some inconsistent and shaky info. I tell my kids and grandkids the truth and don't need to hide behind allegories. They don't need santa, easter bunny, or aslan to explain Jesus. I tell them the story of Jesus and they understand it. Everyone calls me crazy, but I'm not the one going around telling kids there is a santa etc... And I was raised with the santa, easter bunny junk. Sorry to break everyone's stereotype, but I haven't burned a witch in years.
Ha, and glad of it, malakhi! I think as long as Disney doesn't muck it up, this movie has the potential to surpass LotR. (BTW, I suspect we also agree on many if not most fiscal issues.. ;-)
Have you ever seen "The Little Troll Prince"?
EXCELLENT Christmas movie that actually used to air on *gasp* the public stations.
Not out on DVD yet, but it is on video. I can't recommend it enough.
eBay is wonderful. Lots of safeguards built in. Only had one problem, and Paypal refunded my money.
Thanks for the suggestion - I'll check the library catalog :-).
He's a different religion entirely, and is not of Indo-European origin. White Europians probably shouldn't get their panties in a wad over Santa Claus.
Good to hear the Christian aspects have not been squeezed out of the story. There were many on secular film sites predicting those elements would be stripped out, saying "it will be for everyone and not just Christians." They will be most displeased that they were wrong. Excellent!
Mel Gibson should make the movie. Lots of action, which he likes. And the Passion has given him loads of credibility with Christians.
The only problem I see is that he doesn't have any experience with fantasy.
Bump
He did the movie What Women Want, didn't he? ;o)
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