The Lion, the Witch and the Hollywood 'franchise'

Everyone in Hollywood has been looking for the next big thing. They may have found it in The Chronicles of Narnia, C S Lewis's Christian-theme children's fantasy series from the Fifties. Walden Media, a newish production company based in New York, has acquired the film rights to all seven books in the series, with the blessing of the author's family. And it said this week it has high hopes of turning the seven-book series into a rolling smash-hit success.

At present, there are plans to film just one of the books, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Walden has hired a director, Andrew Adamson, who made the computer-generated box-office hit Shrek, and a writer, Ann Peacock. The plan is for a mid-2004 release.

But the company's ambitions go much further. It does not just want to make a film. In the modish parlance of today's Hollywood, it wants to "launch a franchise".

In other words, it is hoping – in these days of Harry Potter mania – that one film based on a well-loved fantasy classic will lead to several more, that the films in turn will spawn a mini-empire in toys and other merchandising, that, in short, the likes of Peter, Susan, Edmond and Lucy will become as familiar to children across the world as Harry, Ron and Hermione.

Will the wardrobe of the book – the entrance to a magical realm where mythical creatures play out a grandiose battle of good versus evil – become a metaphor for Hollywood tapping the next entertainment goldmine?

"We have been relentlessly pursuing this project since the formation of Walden Media," the film company's chief executive, Cary Granat, said when he acquired the rights.

"We were very fortunate the CS Lewis Co saw eye-to-eye with us on exactly how to make this film." It is certainly an idea whose time has come.

Just as surely as J K Rowling's Harry Potter books have transformed the publishing industry, becoming, among other things, the bell-wether on which publisher Bloomsbury's stock price depends, the big-screen versions (one out, one in the can, a third in pre-production) are changing the film industry.

Everyone wants to find the next Harry Potter. Everyone wants to find the gift that just keeps giving, in book after book, film after film, marketing tie-in after marketing tie-in. Fantasy, once spurned as quaint and old-fashioned, is the flavour of the moment. After all, the other big box-office smash of the last year was the first instalment of The Lord of the Rings, J R R Tolkien's fantasy classic.

Logically, the Narnia series should be ripe for exploitation, not least because some of the imaginative twists in Harry Potter owe a little debt to Lewis's work (the wardrobe that provides the entrance to Narnia is not unlike Platform Nine and Three-Quarters at King's Cross).

But will the gamble work? On paper, at least, the project has many things going for it. Mr Granat, who co-founded Walden Media in May 2001, is an experienced film executive who nurtured the highly lucrative Scream series of spoof teen horror films at the Miramax subsidiary, Dimension Films. The company's corporate parent is the billionaire investor Philip Anschutz, who may be in trouble over the Millennium Dome in London and his telecommunications company Qwest back home, but is certainly well-connected in the entertainment world.

Very much on board, too, is Douglas Gresham, C S Lewis's stepson, head of the family literary estate and, in his day job, a non-denominational preacher in Ireland. Mr Gresham has said that what appealed to him about Walden was the company's mission to blend entertainment with education. "It has been our dream for many years not simply to make a live-action version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but to do so while remaining faithful to the novel," Mr Gresham said.

The film project coincides – but remains separate from – a major initiative by the publisher HarperCollins to repackage the Narnia books and market them for a new generation. HarperCollins and its Christian imprint, Zondervan, will be coming out with reprints of the series. There will be a modest (or so we are told) line in Narnia-related toys. Most controversially, HarperCollins also has plans to write a line of "new" Narnia books, including picture versions for the under-fives. This idea has made a number of Lewis fans balk but will almost certainly be a money-spinner if the rest of the initiative can be made to work.

What's the downside? The biggest stumbling block, ironically, may be the books themselves. Although The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe was a bestseller when it came out in 1950, the series has fallen from public favour. Its world of children being sent to a mysterious country house during the Second World War can seem rather remote and a little twee to modern readers. Its overt Christian symbolism – the great allegorical struggles between good and evil, and the death and resurrection of the unmistakably Christ-like Lion Aslan – has also been a turn-off, at least to the secular mainstream of the publishing trade.

Tellingly, the film rights have been around for years, but no Hollywood studio could quite bring itself to put the books on to the big screen. Until 1995, the series was in development at Paramount Pictures. Then, when the producing team of Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall moved to Disney, the project went with them.

At least two sets of writers produced scripts, and directors including John Boorman from Britain were attached. In the end, though, Kennedy and Marshall let the rights lapse at the end of last year, which is when they were snapped up by Walden.

HarperCollins clearly had its own issues with the books when it announced its republishing package, notably the Christian element, which is expected to be toned down or removed in the marketing campaign. Some of Lewis's more ardent Christian followers have been appalled by what they see as a vulgar sanitisation of his work, but, interestingly, the secular approach has been applauded by Douglas Gresham.

"The surest way to prevent secularists and their children from reading [the Narnia series] is to keep it in the 'Christian' or 'Religious' section of the bookstores," he said when the controversy blew up last year.

Perhaps more galling, in the long run, is the notion that the Lewis books are being put on a par, at least by the Hollywood marketing whizzes, with the likes of Austin Powers, Spider-Man and Scooby-Doo. These so-called "franchises" (really just a fancy word for films that spawn sequels and fast-food tie-ins) are a tradition stretching back to Star Wars, the first big merchandising blockbuster. They are all the rage these days, thanks to the powers of "synergy" enjoyed by the multimedia conglomerates who own most of Hollywood.

This vulgarisation-by-Hollywood has certainly raised eyebrows among Harry Potter fans, who were dismayed by the enormous merchandising deal J K Rowling and Warner Brothers struck with Coca-Cola, for example.

Will Lewis fans find themselves in an equal state of high dudgeon in a few years? If they do, it probably won't displease Walden Media excessively. That would mean its gamble had worked and the next Harry Potter was securely in its lap.

Screen writers

J R R Tolkien

Tolkien sold the film rights to The Lord of the Rings in 1969 for £10,000 because of an impending threat from the taxman.

J K Rowling

Rowling is said to have made at least £1m from selling the rights of the Harry Potter books in a deal with Warner Bros.

Philip Pullman

Pullman signed a "substantial" deal this year with New Line, the company that produced The Lord of the Rings.

Jonathan Stroud

Stroudhas signed a £1.9m film deal with Miramax for a series of fantasy books he has yet to complete.

Clive Barker

Barker, a horror writer, has been lured by Disney in a £5.4m deal for fantasy stories based in the magical world of Abarat.