The (new) Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe Movie: WETA is involved, you know this will be GREAT!

In addition, I am a HUGE fan of Peter Jackson’s the Lord of the Rings
trilogy movies (as I am of Tolkien’s original Middle Earth books)–
and think that WETA Workshop did an absolutely phenomenal job
with the special effects for all 6 of those films (the extended feature movies
on DVD are practically like new films, in my
opinion.)

That being said, you can
perhaps understand my enormous enthusiasm and excitement in waiting for the
December 2005 release of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
(TLTW&TW) by the director of Shrek and Shrek 2, Andrew Adamson. And when I
learned today that WETA is doing the special effects, and the director of
special effects for the film is Richard Taylor (who did Lord of the Rings with
Peter Jackson)– well, let’s just say I have no doubt this film will ROCK and be
a definite keeper on home DVD. Dean Wright is the visual effects producer and
also worked on LOTR, this interview with him about his work on the new movie is
worth a quick read. Sounds like Mr and Mrs Beaver as well as Aslan
will be 100% CG. That is good, as the 1988 version of this film I saw on video
defined “cheese” with its stuffed beavers and Aslan character. Certainly didn’t
do justice to the book. Now that film effects technology has advanced
sufficiently, just as LOTR could finally be brought to the screen and satisfy
avid book fans like myself, hopefully the same with be true with this new
version of TLTW&TW.

The following
is a high-resolution trailer with behind the scenes info about the upcoming film
(free QuickTime player software required): Behind the Magic of Narnia (Chapter 2)

This lower-resolution QuickTime featurette from Weta is also
great, it includes lots of description about the characters and
weapons developed for TLTW&TW by Richard Taylor, that reminds me a lot of
the sort of comments he made throughout the special features DVDs for
LOTR.

NarniaWeb Movie News is a good place to find
more up to date info about the film. The image
gallery from the official movie trailer is pretty good. The official
movie site doesn’t have much content yet about the movie, but has
worthwhile info about Narnia and the
characters.

As others may who are
fans of the entire Narnia series, I have already been wondering about sequels,
and yes, apparently the next movie to be produced will be Prince
Caspian. What bliss! Yes there is undoubtedly a very dark side to the
growth of the Internet and the general advance of technology in the early
twenty-first century, but movies like LOTR and this upcoming (hopefully
improved) rendition of TLTW&TW make it a very exciting and rewarding time to
be alive as well!