Harry Potter made it possible to film Narnia in wartime Britain
When a Narnia film was being developed at Paramount, the studio wanted it moved to America. Producers later credited Harry Potter with breaking down those cultural lines, and the 2005 Disney and Walden Media version kept the Pevensie children as Blitz evacuees. It went on to earn 745 million dollars.
Efforts to bring C. S. Lewis's 1950 novel to the screen stalled for years. In the 1990s producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy could not find space to shoot in Britain in 1996, and their plan for a modern setting, plus his sense that effects technology was not ready, turned Lewis's stepson Douglas Gresham against it. Walden Media acquired the rights in December 2001, and Disney joined in 2004 to co-produce. Guillermo del Toro declined to direct because of Pan's Labyrinth, and the job went to Andrew Adamson, fresh from an Oscar for Shrek.
Adamson started from a 20-page treatment built on his childhood memories, which explains some changes. He recalled a giant battle, though in the book it happens mostly offstage, so the film opens with German bombers over London and ends with a full-scale clash. A broken window now drives all four children into the wardrobe, and Lucy finds it during hide-and-seek. Small personal touches crept in: the children's mother is named Helen after Georgie Henley's mother, and the family lives in Finchley because Anna Popplewell comes from there.
Casting the children took from 2002 onward, with 2,500 audition tapes, 1,800 children met and 400 workshopped. William Moseley, remembered by the casting director from an earlier role as an extra, beat 3,000 boys to play Peter. Tilda Swinton was always the first choice for the White Witch, but Aslan changed voices: Brian Cox was cast, then replaced by Liam Neeson, who had sought the role. When Skandar Keynes's voice broke during filming, his sister re-recorded some of his lines. Gresham appears briefly as a radio announcer.
Weta Workshop drew on Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, aiming for a lighter world than its Middle-earth, and the effects designer's children persuaded him to make the witch blonde. Against a 180 million dollar budget it became 2005's third-highest-grossing film and won the Academy Award for makeup.
Source: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
