Disney CEO Robert Iger is now claiming that The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian isn’t performing as well as expected at the box office because the May 16 release date was “too competitive”. It probably had nothing to do with the fact that a large portion of moviegoers were
A. disappointed by the first film, and/or
B. Not excited by the trailers and prerelease advertising for the second film.
Yeah, it probably has NOTHING to do with either of those factors. It’s a good thing that Disney moved Prince Caspian from it’s original Christmas 2007 season release out of fear that The Water Horse would be targeting the same audience. Because we all know what kind of HUGE hit The Water Horse went on to become… To be fair, Disney might have made the move due to Walden Media, who was both their production partner on Prince Caspian and the production company behind the Water Horse. Besides, the footage shown at WonderCon in late February was in such an uncompleted state that I double a 2007 release would have been possible.
It should also be noted that The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is scheduled to hit theaters on May 7th 2010, only a week after Iron Man 2. So it looks like they’ll be able to use the same excuse next time around as well.
source: The Hollywood Reporter
May 29th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
I actually had the same thought about the release date being the problem with the movie. People like their thinly veiled jebus movies around the holidays.
That and they didn’t rally the base, like they did for the first one.
They would have done better to claim that it was being suppressed by the evil liberals for being pro-Christian values.
Christians being attacked by non-believers is what gets asses in seats. Disney should have remembered that.
May 29th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
When I saw Narnia 2 all I could think about was how it was weird because it had kids going to war with adults (and it wasn’t Harry Potter or LOTR magic war…it was more realistic war). They were stabbing people and everything shoot.
May 29th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
My wife is a fan of the books so we took the family to see
this. I can’t say I was all too excited in the idea especially
with Iron Man playing next door, I kept thinking that maybe
I could sneak out before it started and perhaps she wouldn’t notice. Although we watched the first one at home and I
liked it, I could care less to see this because the trailers
didn’t make it a must see movie. After seeing Prince
Caspian I can seriously say I liked the movie and would
gladly see another sequel….at home on DVD.
May 29th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I think it’s a valid reason. No one was expecting Iron Man to do so well so they probably felt it was a safe date. Plus Iron Man, though PG-13, was also very appealing to kids so that took away from Caspian’s audience. I think the movie was a big step up from the first and should do pretty well on DVD.
May 29th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
They should wake up and change it to the Christmas release date. . . just like Lord of the Rings and the early Harry Potter movies. It’s more of a magical time, perfect for Fantasy. Early Summer is for movies like Iron Man, The Mummy, Spiderman, etc.
May 29th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
excuses excuses. disney should just admit that it was a bust and change the voyage of the dawn treador’s release date to the holiday season of 2010. i would have said to release it in winter 2009 but they will probably blame james cameron’s avatar.
May 29th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
What is this Christian stuff you speak of? I saw both movies, and didn’t really get that vibe. I’ve heard it mentioned before, and well, either I missed something, or… I missed something. I just saw a bunch of kids and minotaurs and dwarves and centaurs beating the crap out of each other.
May 29th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Dresden, C.S. Lewis liberally borrowed a lot of Christian imagery for the ‘Narnia’ books. Tolkien adapted a lot of various European mythology for LOTR, although it was far less heavy-handed. Churches heavily pushed for parents to bring their kids to see Narnia for that reason. I never liked the series. Any sword-and-scorcery setting which features Santa Claus as a character needs to be ignored.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Fucking GTAIV. You’re a beast!
May 29th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
that last bit was funny.. peter, you smart ass.
I rather liked the first one, so i was looking forward to this, but i havent found a babysitter so i could go see it.. i guess i better have more kids so they can look after each other.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Dead on. The trailers were unappealing and the first entry wasn’t great. Narnia One was a throwaway knock-off. I didn’t read the book!
Talking about Prince Caspian, Disney had something. The movie’s long ,but its a major improvement in three categories, story, cinematography and editing!!!
Prince Caspian became its own film and its in the spirit of some great fantasy-adventure flicks.
Disney should’ve waited till the 2008 holiday season. They’ll get the bigger bucks in multiple DVD and BluRay releases later.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
water horse LOL
May 29th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Silly Disney of course you predicted wrong. Your math skills mislead you because obviously 2+2= 22! and when you correct that you realize you actually did a lot better than you thought :) No, that’s not right either…
I think a Christmas release would have been the more ideal situation but I think that for all the people who really wanted to see it, it didn’t really make a difference.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:23 am
I’m Sorry but any movie called ” Narnia ” is just bad. It is too close to a porn title
The movies lack any emotional attatchment and thats why they suck
stick to reading the book
May 30th, 2008 at 11:43 am
@ terrance
instead of making strange and retarded comments, stick to watching your wierd porn.
May 31st, 2008 at 6:40 pm
As to how the first film “disappointed audiences” yet resulted in tractor trailers loaded with cash for Disney and Walden… well, let’s just say I can’t follow your logic there.
Prince Caspian performed poorly because it’s dark tone drove away family audiences.
May 31st, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Jaime: by your assessment, anything that makes money must not be a disappointment. Wait, weren’t the star wars prequels some of the highest grossing films of all time? The later Harry Potter films took on a darker tone and didn’t scare away the family audiences. The reason being: people liked the series.They liked the last film and wanted to see the next one and the next one after that.
June 30th, 2008 at 9:19 am
ts very simple, really, why PC did poorly at the box office compared to the first Narnia movie Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.
All of the loyal narnia fans, called by Andrew “fanatics” were extremely disappointed with the film. We “fanatics” either watched it only once (got very upset, and did NOT spend hundreds of dollars to take all our friends&family to see it as we did for LWW.) or we boycotted it entirely after seeing some clips and hearing the plot from our friends.
They mangled Peter. They mangled Susan. They mangled Caspian. They mangled the Telmarines. And they mangled Aslan. For starters…if they wanted action…there was the whole Miraz-usurping-the-throne deal when Caspian was a small child. There was also the mysterious reason for why Susan is losing her faith throughout the book. There is Peter’s character, which exemplifies sanctification and faith, especially when he fights the duel. It would NOT have made a poor movie. There was ALOT there.
But Adamson scrapped all those themes for a teeny-bopper action flick. Whoever wrote the script had no idea what true faith was. Romance was portrayed as a temporary/irresponsible/hormonal thing (no sense of restraint, self-control, or faithfulness). And of course, Hollywood can’t stand a real male hero leader, so Peter had to be mangled into “just one of us”. Well, it didn’t do as well as LWW, which actually stayed true to the themes of the book.
Because there really was so much depth/meaning/symbolism/inner struggle going on in the book. But the scriptwriters were blockheads.