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.
Actually thats the one we bought. Although I got it off the Campus Crusade for Christ website. Reading the Bible, I know that this is not even allegory.
http://www.blessedquietness.com/journal/homemake/narnia.htm
Here's some reading for you. If you still want to go - enjoy.
I've read the complete Narnia Chronicles numerous times. I've even discused The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe with Theology majors and professors at my religious college. All agree this is a book laced with Christian values etc.
I pose one question to you, where in this book do they worship the sun?
Granted an evil witch put a spell over the land to make it permanently winter and never christmas. All the creatures of the land wanted spring to return; but no one prayed to a sun god. It was a belief that when Aslan comes back to Narnia and 4 human children sit upon the throne at Cair Parival spring will return to the land and the evil witch will be defeated.
I highly reccomend that you at least read this book, or the whole series for that matter, before spewing your comments/judgements on it.
ROFLOL!
my 7 yo understood most of the alligorical (is that a word?) aspect of it.
i think the response " I could tell that it was occultic right away. So I tossed it in the trash. " is unfortunately the answer. hopefully this person never has to openly defend their faith, it might be an belief shattering experience for them.
Actually the alien is an engineered being designed for warfare and is the equivalent of a talking pit bull.
Do as you're led. But there's a case to be made that you will be withdrawing support for their trying to do a good work, and harming the chances Hollywood will put out more good stuff in the future. And Eisner is on the way out.
You know, Christ made up stories to prove a point as well.
Those are what we call "parables"
I like what A&E has been doing with book adaptations, too, but they're not books I feel intensely about.
I've been looking for that Charlton Heston "Treasure Island," and haven't been able to find it. (My son is a big fan of Chuck's.) And I love George C. Scott as Scrooge!
Are you kidding me?!? I read the series first back around 7-8 years old. Re-read it about 11 and I recognized many of allegorical references to Christianity Lewis was making. I treasure those books from a child's point of view as one of my first understandings of Christ's sacrifice (as symbolized by Aslan being killed)
http://www.blessedquietness.com/journal/believe.htm
"I have NO creed but the King James Bible."
... and all others are from the devil right?
I haven't read all the responses on this thread, but it seems to me that, if you're going to try to affect Disney where it lives, and encourage them to create more family-friendly fare, you actually would want to go to this movie, and avoid the ones that Disney makes that you don't like.
I'm not a big fan of boycotts, generally. I find them less-than-effective. It seems that causing one type of movie to sell better than another, though, would bring it to someone's attention, rather than just removing yourself from relevancy.
Actually I read the NASB.
Lewis and Williams also drank and smoked together (2) which is hardly surprising considering how often drinking wine and strong drink is mentioned in Lewis' "children's" books!
Oh my, well that convinces me, all right! (rolls eyes)
Some more:
C.S. Lewis'The author of that site is an utter lunatic.
Sun Worship in the
Chronicles of Narnia
To begin with, "arslan" is said to be the Turkish word for "lion," and the most likely source for the name Aslan. The symbolism of a lion would not of itself be a particular problem if it were not for the other information which Lewis stealthily reveals regarding the particular lion he is writing about. Once the evidence has been examined it is certain that it is not "the Lion of the tribe of Juda" by any stretch of the imagination .
According to the Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore, and Symbols by Gertrude Jobes, the sun is "The active or male principle in nature, wanderer, lion, gold, symbolised by the bow and arrow."
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! I love it! "Santa Clause," that old curmudgeon who brings bad children grammar textbooks for Christmas, right?
No, candy canes - they are bad for the teeth.
No, candy canes - they are bad for the teeth.
The previews look great. WETA Workshop is doing the animation. The same group that did Lord of the Rings...
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