20th Century Fox to Co-Finance Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 by Peter Sciretta
Walt Disney Pictures saw the writing in the sand, leaving Walden Media stranded when they pulled out of co-financing the third Chronicles of Narnia film. What movie studio would be stupid enough to step-in and co-finance what is likely to be both a financial and critical disappointment?
20th Century Fox of course!
Variety reports that Walden and Fox are currently working on a budget (expect much smaller) and working through script issues (ie, how can we make this for a lot less), but hope to shoot The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader at the end of the Summer in Australia. The current plan is to release the film through the Fox Walden label in a holiday 2010 release.
The two studios will split production and P&A costs, which are expected to cost around $140 million, about $60 million less than Prince Caspian. The last film had the tenth biggest box office gross of 2008 with over $419 million worldwide, but barely eeked out a profit theatrically (P&A and exhibition feeds account for more than half the gross, and the film cost over $200 million to produce)
