Any partnership on a Narnia movie will require a substantial investment. Caspian, which filmed in the Czech Republic, Mexico and New Zealand, cost $200 million. The first film, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, was shot mostly in New Zealand for $180 million. Further challenging Treader may be a waning of the pricey children’s fantasy genre. When the Harry Potter series topped the book charts and then filled movie theatres, studios began snapping up fantasy manuscripts as quickly as they could. When The Lord of the Rings showed it was possible for adults to enjoy the fare as well – and produced the box-office results to prove it – Hollywood’s fascination with the genre intensified.
But no other fantasy adventure films have shown that kind of box-office punch. Earlier this year, Warners and New Line hoped they were launching a franchise with The Golden Compass, but the adaptation of the Philip Pullman trilogy tanked domestically. The film grossed just $70 million domestically and the co-production partners declined to go forward with a second installment despite the fact the film did take in more than $300 million overseas.
Dustin Hoffman finds Last Chance for love
At 71, Dustin Hoffman says he will never retire from acting, but he may have to look far beyond the Hollywood that made him famous to find the roles he relishes as he ages. His latest film, Last Chance Harvey is a small ode to finding love late in life, a theme that should resound with the fastest-growing movie-going audience – viewers over 40. It opens in U.S. theaters on Christmas Day. Hoffman, who plays down-on-his-luck Harvey opposite Emma Thompson’s Kate, would like to make more films for older fans, just as he reveled in representing a younger generation as Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate 40 years ago. But the two-time Oscar winner and seven-time nominee doesn’t think the Hollywood studios – bent on big films that blanket theaters – are capable of taking on senior romance.
“If I had my druthers, it wouldn’t be to change the studio system. It would be to add two or maybe three languages to my repertoire, which now only consists of street English,” Hoffman said in a recent interview. “But if I could speak French, Spanish and Italian, I’d be working in movies that interested me more. They still honor love stories about people who are past the age of not needing facial work. You can age in Europe.” Hoffman, born and raised in Los Angeles, says he never understood, even as a kid, the obsession with youth and what he calls “the lack of respect for age here that doesn’t exist in all countries.”