They call him Wolverine, and he’s the best at what he does, and what he does is shred the box office with berserker rage!  Okay, enough of the Wolverine analogies, but you can’t help but be impressed with the $87 million haul of X-Men Origins: Wolverine!

What a way to start off the summer–with the 2009 box office up over last year, people are still hungry for movies, even in this economy. Fox need not fret any more about the pirated version that leaked out, hurting the box office, because the Hugh Jackman-starrer proved that people love to see movies in the theaters.

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Just over a month after the news that Fox had saved the Narnia franchise by coming on-board to co-finance it, we get the release date for the third film:

December 10th, 2010

This will see the franchise return to its original winter release date: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe was released on December 9th, 2005 but for some reason they decided to change that up for the second film, which came out on May 16th 2008 - and made only $141 million (which was only about half what the first one made).

A month after it was revealed that Walt Disney had pulled out of financing the next Narnia film we have news that 20th Century Fox has swooped in and taken hold of (part of) the financial reigns. Budget and script issues are still being worked out between Walden and Fox but they hope for an end of summer start date for shooting and are aiming for a summer 2010 release.

This is a kind of stroke of ironic luck on Fox’s part as head of Fox 2000 (the part of Fox that will be spearheading production and development matters) had been pursuing the Narnia franchise but was beaten to it by Walden. Over the past few years they have been looking for “a family-friendly, lit-based franchise for years,” with Eragon being a disappointing financial flop for them.

It’s been revealed that Walt Disney has pulled out of co-producing and co-financing the third film in The Chronicles of Narnia franchise, subtitled The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The reasons are unclear but were described as “budgetary and logistical.”

With the under-performance of the last film, Prince Caspian, I’m not surprised that Disney has decided to pull out. If you’re a regular Screen Rant reader this news won’t be a complete surprise. Fellow writer Jamie Williams predicted back in May that Dawn Treader was probably not going to be made.

The further they delve into these stories the more expensive they are going to be to make, and with a diminishing return this may be a good call.

With Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull pulling in $151 million this weekend and Iron Man continuing to do solid business beyond damn-near everyone’s expectations, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (now in its second week in theatres, no less) has still not cracked $100 million. And before anyone asks, that does include the Memorial Day numbers!

Just before the summer film-season kicked off, a number of box-office forecasters were projecting Prince Caspian to pull in anywhere between $270 - $320 million. At the rate it’s going now, it’ll be lucky to get anywhere near $200 million.

Short version: Prince Caspian is much better than the first Narnia film.

Let’s get straight to the point: If you liked the first Chronicles of Narnia movie, you’ll like this one even better. For some reason I never wrote a review of the first one, but if I had I probably would have given it about , a full point lower than Prince Caspian.

On the other hand, if you’re a big fan of the book upon which this film is based, you’re going to be torn because it deviates heavily from that story. I wouldn’t have known that myself, but my daughter re-read the book just recently and found herself pulled in two directions regarding the movie. On its own she thought it was very good, but she was perturbed over the inclusion of entire sequences that never appeared in the book while parts of the original story were completely absent from the film.

[UPDATE: Disney has notified us that they do indeed plan on bringing ALL the remaining Chronicles of Narnia movies to the big screen. According to them the source on this is completely wrong. - Vic]

We knew it was in development. But according to our buddies at Jim Hill Media, Disney and Pixar are moving forward with a film-trilogy based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars series for 2012 at the earliest… if not sooner than that.

Mark Andrews (Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Ratatouille) has already written a draft that both Disney and Pixar executives went bonkers over; crazy enough that they’re seriously wanting this to become their next big franchise instead of adapting all seven Chronicles of Narnia books(!?!)

The second Narnia installment Prince Caspian will open this coming May with the third outing, and Voyage of the Dawn Treader slated for a May 2010 release. Beyond that, there are no current plans to bring the remaining four novels to the silver screen. In fact, Dawn Treader might even be in jeopardy unless Caspian does killer box-office.

I haven’t given the Chronicles of Narnia movies much coverage, but this trailer for the second film in the series - Prince Caspian, looks pretty good.

I watched the first one with high hopes, but in the end I was left a bit disappointed by it. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, while visually very cool and despite the fact that I liked the actors, just felt kind of… empty to me. I can’t put my finger on it, but I was expecting to be moved by it in a way similar to how the Lord of the Rings trilogy affected me. It looked like that was the vibe they were going for, but in the end I thought it fell flat.

In any case, here’s the new trailer along with the poster:

Funny how both these posters came out on the same day considering the main characters are about as opposite to each other as you can get.
Click on the small image for a larger version of both the Chronicles of Narnia and Ghost Rider posters.

I’m looking forward to Chronicles of Narnia and as far as Ghost Rider goes, I always enjoy Nicholas Cage in whatever role he happens to play.

I haven’t given any coverage to The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe here at Screen Rant, and I guess it’s about time I do. The first teaser trailer is out exclusively at Moviefone and I have to say it looks extremely impressive. I think we may have the next “Lord of the Rings” with the “Chronicles” series.

It seems like it will be an amazing adventure film aimed at kids, and unless Disney signed off on something completely stupid as far as inserting “adult” humor or situations, considering the source material by C.S. Lewis this should be family friendly fare indeed.

The runaway success of fantasy-oriented movies such as the Harry Potter series and, of course, The Lord of the Rings has started a trend of sorts. Since those movies were actually quite good, there is already a very high bar to jump for anyone else who wants to jump on board the gravy train.

Anyone who wants to make a fantasy movie these days will need to be prepared to invest in a top-quality script, state-of-the-art special effects and well-known, Oscar-worthy actors and directors who can get people sitting in the theater seats.

The latest addition to the fold is the first of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, currently in pre-production and slated for a late 2005 release. It’s always hard to believe that something you imagined so vividly in your mind can be translated accurately to the big screen, but it can be done, as Peter Jackson showed us.

My feelings on this particular movie are mixed as far as cast and crew. Of course, a movie this early into production can change cast and/or crew if somebody sneezes wrong, but so far the director is Andrew Adamson, who is best known for directing Shrek and (brace yourself) Shrek 2. The ice queen will reportedly be played by Tilda Swinton. I’m not her biggest fan, but based on what I have seen of her work, a villain role (which the ice queen most certainly is) is more appropriate for her.

So did Peter Jackson redeem at least one genre of movies? Perhaps in part he did, but I’m willing to bet that studio heads aren’t happy about this trend at all. Investing hundreds of millions of dollars into production and marketing is something that the suits have become more and more reluctant to do. All I can say is, it’s a good thing the reality movie genre has mostly crashed and burned at the box office; otherwise, we would be overrun with unscripted drama on TV and in the theaters.

Source: IMDB

Brian