The Magician's Nephew to be the next Chronicles of Narnia film

I keep expecting to hear that The Chronicles of Narnia movies have finally been shut down. Based on the extremely popular series of children's books by C.S. Lewis, the film adaptations have underwhelmed here in the United States. Once thought to be the next big Harry Potter-esque franchise, Disney cut ties with it altogether after the box office failure of the second film, Prince Caspian. Fox scooped it up not long after, and continued the association with producer Walden Media on the third film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. That movie did poorly here also, taking nearly seven weeks to reach the $100M mark.  Globally the series has done extremely well, earning over $1.5B, but high production costs put a serious damper on any profits. 

There'd been some discussion as to the future of the films, particularly about which novel to adapt next. The Silver Chair is the fourth book in the Narnia series, and would follow the story of Eustace Scrubb(played by Will Coulter in the movie). However it's looking like the film series will be diverging away from that, as Michael Flaherty of Walden Media recently stated that he and Fox are looking to adapt The Magician's Nephew next...

Flaherty: Weare starting to talk to Fox and talk to the C.S. Lewis estate now about the Magician’s Nephew being our next film… If we can all agree to move forward, then what we would do is find someone to write the script. So, it could still be a couple of years.

The Magician's Nephew is the sixth Narnia book written by Lewis, but in terms of chronology it takes place before the events of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. It tells the story of two kids, Digory Kirke(seen as an adult played by Jim Broadbent in the first movie) and Polly Plummer, who stumble into another world, witnessing the birth of Narnia, and the introduction of Jadis, the evil witch played by Tilda Swinton.  They also meet Aslan, bear witness to his power, and learn the origin of the wardrobe itself. 

The Silver Chair is one of the more boring books in the series, in my opinion, so I'm not surprised to see them trying to skip over it. Plus this story gives a chance to show a more immediate link to the first film, which most people really enjoyed. If The Magician's Nephew succeeds, I wouldn't be surprised if they jump right back into The Silver Chair, completing the King Caspian trilogy.

Thanks to Comingsoon.net(via Slashfilm) for info on this story!