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.
BTW.. Tolkien and Lewis were great friends, and Lewis credits Tolkien for converting him to Christianity.
There's a TLTWATW video out?
Try reading the book instead.
Keep the bible away from them too. There's this episode about a witch from Endor in it.
Trolls never do.
Amazing how that works.
Perhaps you should read C.S. Lewis' writings before you make such an uninformed comment.
Try the Focus on the Family Radio adaptations available on CD. They are awesomely well done and if nothing else instill a sense of honor and heroism in my kids as they see the transformation of Edmund from a weasel who torments his sister into a King of Narnia through the self sacrifice of Aslan.
Then there is Eustace (Dawn Treader, Silver Chair) who is also transformed from a public school bully into a boy who repents his evil and selfish nature to become a hero.
Furthermore, they model gender based behavior of womanly gentleness and kindess and manly humility and heroics on the part of the children.
And Lewis was prescient as presenting an Islamic like culture and religion as the foe of civilisation/Christianity in the end times "The Last Battle".
The trailer looks really good.
1.
1. The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.
2. A story, picture, or play employing such representation. John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Herman Melville's Moby Dick are allegories.
2. A symbolic representation: The blindfolded figure with scales is an allegory of justice.
[Middle English allegorie, from Latin allēgoria, from Greek, from allēgorein, to interpret allegorically : allos, other + agoreuein, to speak publicly (from agora, marketplace).] al'le·go'rist n.
I cannot tell you how many times we watched those BBC videos. We practically knew them by heart. Finally, my finicky movie-loving husband watched them and liked them too. We had long ago nicknamed him Puddleglum, so he finally found out why.
Enjoy your pagan movie - I'll pass.
Uh... do the words "SPOILER ALERT" mean anything to this writer?
True, everyone should have read the Chronicles... but not everyone has.
I would have loved that!
Allegory wasn't just a terrible presidential candidate.
The BBC does a much better job of book adaptation than others. I enjoyed their Jane Austin stuff, especially Pride and Prejudice. Colin Firth was just as I imagined Mr. Darcy. Their Lion Witch and Wardrobe was quite good. Hallmark can do good stuff also.
Aamazingly, Ted Turner did a fairly good job with bible stories. His Abraham is excellent. TBN also did the wonderful Charlton Heston version of Treasure Island. Also the George C Scott version of a Christmas Carol is fairly accurate.
Still waiting for a good, accurate version of so many novels. Little Women disappoints me every time they make it. The Susan Sarandon version, while fun, was morphed into a liberal anti Christian show.
I agree - the message is more important.
Welcome to Free Republic!
My kids thought those films were clunky, and the characters didn't look or sound like they thought they should. YMMV.
Hey, we agree on something! ;o)
The trailer was fantastic, and I'll be taking my kids to see it when it comes out.
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