Will this ‘Lion’ roar?

AT any given moment on any given day over the last 3 1/2 years, Andrew Adamson could have been fretting over fauns, goblins, unicorns, satyrs, ogres, sprites, centaurs and dryads. The director of “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” might be found worrying about four actors so young the littlest member still sucks her thumb. Adamson may well have been occupied by a crew of up to 800 people, a budget of $180 million, and some 1,700 special effects shots. Or perhaps he was negotiating a story point with the C.S. Lewis estate, which was determined not to let Hollywood disfigure the author’s most famous book.

But on this warm and sunny spring afternoon in the middle of nowhere on New Zealand’s South Island -- Day 97, if you are counting, of a staggering 139 days of principal photography -- Adamson for a minute can think about nothing else but snow, and whether or not to fake it.

“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” represents a vast leap for the 38-year-old Adamson, who co-directed the first two “Shrek” movies. As with “Shrek,” his new film is set in a fantasy world populated with talking animals and mythical creatures. Unlike those animated blockbusters, however, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” is the first movie Adamson has directed without a partner, and it’s the first time he has made a live-action film.

Equally important, Adamson doesn’t enjoy the luxury of stealth, which he certainly benefited from on the first “Shrek” movie. As “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” was readied for its Dec. 9 debut, everyone -- including Disney, which is betting the movie can mend its ailing studio, and religious leaders, who see the film as a significant Christian parable -- was looking over Adamson’s shoulders each step of the way, concerned that the filmmaker get the smallest things right. That pressure makes seemingly minor decisions feel momentous -- which leads to the snow.

Spread in front of Adamson on the movie’s set in a natural amphitheater called Elephant Rocks are four snow samples. Three are fakes, made from combinations of foam and paper, and one is the real thing. Producer Phil Steuer and special effects supervisor Jason Durey are leading Adamson through the snow audition, each candidate spread out on a small piece of black plastic. The samples look more or less identical, but Adamson studies them intently. For the better part of the film, Narnia is frozen in an endless winter. If the film’s snow doesn’t look right, nothing else will.

“In some regards, I’d like to use the real stuff,” Adamson says with a slight accent from his native New Zealand still in evidence. “Because it’s actually supposed to be melting.”

The snow will be used a few days later as siblings from the Pevensie family make their way through Narnia, a magical land accessed by a wardrobe in a house where the children have been sent during the World War II bombing of London. Peter, Susan and Lucy Pevensie are walking toward the camp of Aslan, a lion battling the White Witch for control of Narnia.

For a century, Narnia and all of its creatures, real and mythological, have been locked under the witch’s cruel, frigid spell. But now that the children have arrived, potentially fulfilling a prophecy of liberation, the weather is turning warmer, the cherry trees beginning to blossom, the snow starting to thaw.

For this part of the story, Adamson wants to truck down real snow from the mountains for greater verisimilitude. But by November (New Zealand’s seasons are opposite North America’s), the snow is too hard and dirty, and even clean snow might melt too quickly in the fierce sun. So Adamson chooses one of the fakes instead. And no one will ever notice.

When the scene is finished, the movie’s artificial snow feels as genuine as its almost fully computer-animated talking beavers, which is to say very real indeed.

A WINNING FORMULA?

“THE Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” houses more than one possible resurrection story. The tale’s self-sacrificing lion, Aslan, is miraculously raised from the dead. And, on a business level, the film is intended to revive the fortunes of Disney’s movie unit and its producing partner, Walden Media.

Having lost its animated feature monopoly (largely thanks to Adamson’s “Shrek,” which he co-directed for DreamWorks), Disney has been trying to find a repeatable succession of films for family audiences.

Starting in 1950, Lewis published seven children’s books in his Narnia series, and if the first movie works, the next Narnia film could be in theaters by late 2007 -- indeed, work already has begun on a screenplay.

“It has all the right ingredients,” Dick Cook, Disney’s studio chairman, says of the attraction of the Narnia books. “Obviously, it’s a well-known story with great characters. It has stood the test of time, and it affords everyone the opportunity, if it is successful, to have a series, a franchise.”

Disney believed the commencement of filming on “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” so momentous that it went to the unusual length of taking out full-page advertisements in newspapers around the world to trumpet it. The ads coincided with Disney’s 2004 annual meeting, in which 43% of shareholders voted against Michael Eisner as chairman.

Cook says the timing was happenstance, but he won’t downplay the importance the books represent to his studio. “We had not had in our history source material that has more than 90 million readers worldwide,” Cook says.

Philip Anschutz’s Walden Media and its sister production company, Bristol Bay Productions, have suffered their share of movie turmoil too. While Anschutz, a billionaire oil explorer, railroad baron and entertainment investor, did back the Oscar-winning “Ray,” his other recent releases include the pricey bombs “Sahara” and “Around the World in 80 Days.”

For all the apparent appeal that the Lewis books may hold to movie studios, it has taken two decades to get this far. In 1985, six years after a low-budget CBS animated movie, “The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe,” was made, screenwriter Bill Dial approached Disney about making a high-end version of the same novel.

Dial says Disney’s Eisner and then studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg weren’t keen to finance the film, whether animated or live action. One of the obstacles, Dial says, was its cost; another was the studio’s dealing with the Lewis estate, which wore its Christian faith on its sleeve. “That gets in the way of some Hollywood people,” Dial says. “But it didn’t bother me.”

By 1994, Paramount Pictures controlled the rights, and producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall (“Seabiscuit”) enlisted Menno Meyjes (“The Color Purple”) to write a screenplay that transplanted the story to modern-day Brentwood. The movie didn’t get made, and Paramount’s rights lapsed in November 2001.

Within days of Paramount’s rights expiring, Walden began its full-court “Chronicles of Narnia” press, holding off several other suitors wooing the Lewis estate. Douglas Gresham, a Lewis stepson and co-producer/consultant on the film, met with several bidders and the reclusive Anschutz, who Gresham says promised to respect the books, then considered his options.

“I’m a Christian, so I did what I often do,” Gresham says on the set, where he was an occasional visitor. “I prayed.”

Anschutz and Walden were awarded the rights, and Walden was soon inundated by directors who saw in the books their own “Harry Potter” or “Lord of the Rings.” The filmmaker candidates included Rob Minkoff (“The Lion King”), John Boorman (“Hope and Glory”) and, quite oddly, David Fincher (“Fight Club”).

Walden Chief Executive Officer Cary Granat met with Adamson, who was toying with making a small art film, the day after “Shrek” won the Oscar in March 2002 for best animated feature. Adamson soon was selected as the director for the first, and arguably most crucial, film. “He grew up with the book,” Granat says. “He remembered the bigness of it.”

A MULTITUDE OF MOVING PARTS

THAT bigness no longer is just part of Adamson’s memory -- his childhood reminiscence has been turned into a massive production compound in the lush hills of New Zealand’s Waitaki district, where enormous tents bustle with crews from every conceivable trade. On this particular day, the crew call is a mere 500 people summoned as early as 4 a.m. A dozen horses are practicing charging for the film’s climactic battle, and Adamson’s cinematographer, Donald McAlpine, is nervously eyeing the skies, which are rapidly oscillating from blinding sun to dark clouds.

Among the crew are 18 costumers, 11 animal trainers, 12 prosthetic experts, 42 visual and special effects technicians, and five tutors to look after the film’s young stars: William Moseley (Peter), Anna Popplewell (Susan), Skandar Keynes (Edmund) and Georgie Henley (Lucy).

Adamson is clearly sleep-deprived, but even with so much going on, he seems preternaturally calm. With so many logistical and technical challenges -- three-fourths of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’s” characters aren’t human -- Adamson says his greatest fear was relating to the quartet of young, and very human, English actors.

“I was afraid of working with children, [and] I haven’t been around a lot of teenagers before this,” says Adamson, who when the film began preproduction had no kids of his own but now has a toddler and a newborn daughter. “So that was the most daunting thing. But I found the kids were much more open than adults.”

Rather than cast recognizable or highly experienced actors, Adamson chose kids who look like siblings and whose personalities were close to the characters they play.

To take advantage of Henley’s natural wide-eyed wonder, Adamson blindfolded the then 8-year-old actress the first time she stepped into Narnia. With the cameras rolling, Adamson then removed the blindfold, filming Henley’s trembling amazement over the new world -- a shot that’s in the finished film. When Henley couldn’t cry on cue after Aslan’s death, Popplewell volunteered to stand off-camera and tease the younger girl about her sister. The tears promptly flowed.

But those were among the very few low-tech solutions to Adamson’s creative hurdles.

“There is nothing easy about this,” Walden’s Granat says during a break. “It’s one of the most technologically challenging movies ever made.”

Take a centaur, for example. In the movie, the mythological combination of a human and a horse can be composed any of four ways. The centaur could be created by adding computer-generated horse legs to a real human torso. Real horse legs might be added to a computer-generated human. It might be real horse legs grafted onto a real human torso. Or the whole creature might be computer-generated, the same technology used to create Aslan and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. And then the centaur has to be instructed, via a few thousand mouse clicks, how to move around, gallop and charge into battle.

“Because of the computer programming, the centaur knows about its own balance -- it’s the closest we’ve ever gotten to having a real mythological creature, because it has a real brain,” Adamson says. “You are always trying to do a large number of things that have never been done before.”

With so many effects added in postproduction, the New Zealand set is hardly teeming with all of the creatures that will fill the screen when the movie is finished. As Peter, Susan and Lucy walk into Aslan’s camp, hopeful the lion can rescue their brother, Edmund, there are no Aslan, no Beavers, and only a couple of dozen centaurs, which for now are human actors wearing green tights that will be digitally converted into hoofs, hocks and fetlocks.

Adamson helps his young actors imagine what the finished scene will look like. “You are all excited to meet Aslan after all this time,” he tells Moseley, Popplewell and Henley, who is sucking her thumb. “You look over at the tent. Everybody bows. Then you hear a noise from the tent. And out comes a big lion’s paw.”

Adamson then performs the voices of Aslan and the Beavers, somehow creating on this immense exterior location a sense of quiet intimacy.

An even more remarkable transformation occurs back in Los Angeles, where Adamson cuts in the completed visual effects. By the time he is done, the camp will extend to the horizon, on which an ocean has been created. Aslan’s 80 troops on the set will grow into several thousand, and Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) will look as lifelike as anything in “Born Free.”

Even with New Zealand’s ever-shifting daylight, cinematographer McAlpine has filmed a consistently bright world, one that subliminally evolves from a stark coldness into a burst of spring colors.

Mark Johnson, who produced the movie with Steuer, says Adamson’s experience on the computer-animated “Shrek” movies, in addition to his work as a visual effects supervisor (Adamson’s credits include “Batman & Robin”), made his hiring less of a reach than might appear.

“He knew how a movie set worked,” Johnson says. “And when you look at the ‘Shrek’ movies, you know those are not live actors, but those are real performances. I was convinced he was the right guy. And there was no question from the first day that he was in charge and knew what he was doing.”

Adds Tilda Swinton, who plays the White Witch: “In many respects, Andrew is the most experienced first-time director you could ever find.”

A CHILD-CENTRIC STORY

ADAMSON recognized that “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” carried messianic themes, which he quickly notes also anchor the “Harry Potter,” “Star Wars” and “Matrix” movies. But he also saw in Lewis’ book a story of a family of four children looking after one another, a tale of young girls becoming empowered, and a place to laugh with a couple of bickering beavers.

“The characters in the book are pretty simple and one-note,” the director says. “But I wanted the movie to be told through the kids’ point of view.”

The challenge was convincing the Lewis estate that those were all acceptable ideas, since it had to approve departures from the book. “I suspect the major studios would not have allowed us this much input,” Gresham says.

Adamson and screenwriters Ann Peacock, Chris Markus and Steve McFeely made Susan far less passive than in the book; she now actually shoots an arrow in the film’s final battle. The estate approved the change, on condition that Susan’s shot wasn’t lethal.

Adamson also wanted to strip Lewis’ 1950 book of language that today feels sexist. When the Pevensie children encounter Father Christmas in the book, he gives them weapons, telling Lucy as he hands her a dagger, “ ... battles are ugly when women fight.” The line in the movie now reads: “Battles are ugly affairs.” Father Christmas also no longer instructs Susan, “I do not mean you to fight in the battle.”

Even the wisecracking beavers (voiced by Ray Winstone and Dawn French) attracted Gresham’s concern. “I felt a little bit wary about that in the beginning,” Gresham says. “But that’s the way it should be in the movies: What you do in the movie has to be very different from what you do in the book.”

Adamson faced countless other minor complications.

Worries about an early screenplay draft halted preproduction and casting. Brian Cox, initially cast as Aslan’s voice, was replaced by Neeson because, Adamson says, Cox’s voice lacked the necessary weight. Due largely to special effects costs, the film’s $150-million budget grew by $30 million. Even though Disney’s initial investment was capped at $75 million, the studio agreed to share the overages with Walden.

The film’s reindeer couldn’t pass New Zealand’s quarantine and had to be created digitally and as animatronic models. And Adamson had to trim some sequences, including a brief scene in which the White Witch’s troops are on fire, to get a PG rating (although parents still should carefully consider whether to take young children to the film).

The test now is how “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” will be received, whether its spiritual message -- the boys are called “sons of Adam,” the girls “daughters of Eve” -- will unite audiences or divide them. Christians will surely see it as a retelling of part of the New Testament, with Aslan’s return from death analogous to the resurrection of Christ. A number of conservative Christian leaders are rallying around the film, and Disney has hired some of the same grass-roots-marketing consultants who worked on Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”

Disney certainly believes the movie will appeal to faith-based communities. But the studio is equally confident that audiences spiritual and agnostic, and of all ages, will find “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” an emotionally moving fantasy. The competition is intense: In addition to all of the other movies flooding the multiplex at the end of the year, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” debuts just five days before the season’s true 800-pound gorilla, Peter Jackson’s epic remake of “King Kong.”

“I think clearly the religious community is going to be a part of the appeal of this movie,” Disney’s Cook says. “But whether you consider yourself a religious person or not, the movie has all the elements you want in a great movie. What we have done is try to cast the widest net and appeal to everyone.”