|
Director Andrew Adamson is crouched and ready to take the weekend box-office by storm with the Walt Disney and Walden Media backed family film The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.
{sidebar id=1}The IESB spoke with Adamson before the film's release about making the sequel. He talks about working with humans, leaving the franchise as a director and much more! Plus, we get an update on another project he's working on "Benighted."
IESB: Knowing that this was your last Narnia, directing wise, how difficult was it for you to say cut on the final take?
Andrew Adamson: I don't know if I did, I think I just walked away (laughing). It was difficult. We had a funny finish, I told the studio that I would finish by September 30 and I wasn't entirely finished but I had to stop and there were a few shots to be picked up that we left the unit behind with our AD directing so it was sort of an inauspicious finishing where we got to the point where we said, "Ok, we're out of time, let's open the champagne!" But emotionally, because after shooting there is still six months of post to go it's really now that I'm going through the letting go process. After this is all done and the junket is all done and all of that I think that's when the emotional time will come for me.
Q: Regarding your producing role in the next one, is that going to be hard for you considering you will have to let Michael do what he's gonna do?
AA: It's potentially difficult but at the same time I have been through that with the Shrek films, you know, I let go of Shrek 2 and Shrek 3 I took a backseat. So, I think as a director you are trying to get the best from your actors and I hope that as a producer I am able to do the same thing and just help Michael where he needs it. Help the story stay solemnly true to what I think it should be from the book and all those kinds of things but still give him the breathing space to make the film.
IESB: It was a much bigger human cast this time around, what that bit different for you instead of dealing with a majority of your actors in make-up, the majority of them were in armor.
AA: Everyone on set felt so liberated, when it was like, "oh look at this, it's a couple of guys in a room!" (laughing) You could let people walk around without worrying about the consequences of changing the shot or anything like that, just what you see is what you get. It was very liberating and on top of that, working with some really incredible talent, we really were able to cherry pick some of the top talent from around the world all of these guys are really at the top of the game and I think, we got a very interesting cast.
IESB: How did you decide on the Telmarine accent?
AA: Well, it came from several levels. First, I wanted Caspian to be very different from Peter. I wanted the world to be more expansive and not just feel like another version of Britain in another world basically. so we were looking at the origins of the Telmarines and thinking about the fact that they came from pirates and how much of those pirate stories happened in the Mediterranean and the Spanish Armada and conquistadors and all those things so why not make the Telmarines of undefined Mediterranean descent. And that opened up the casting to Italy, Spain anywhere that had a Latin background just to make the world feel a bit wider as much as you know, Cornel who plays Winsong? who almost has a West African accent. In each case I felt it made the world feel bigger, big and diverse.
IESB: It definitely worked. There were some things explored much more and introduced in the film that weren't in the book like the attack on the castle and the White Witch, was there ever hesitation in doing that?
AA: No, there really wasn't any hesitation. You're always cautious not to go so far that you feel like you're telling a different story and for me I always try and draw upon something so at least it feels like it belongs. In the case of the book, Reepicheep mentions the idea of attacking Miraz's castle and that's about as far as it goes. They talk about raising the White Witch but they don't get so far as bringing her back. But, actually that came about because Tilda [Swinton] said she would love to be in it and I said well then why not bring her back. (laughter) Like the waterfall sequence, in the last film, there wasn't a waterfall sequence in the book but it felt natural, it felt like, "Ok, it's going from winter to spring very quickly, it makes perfect sense to build the waterfalls that are frozen". So, once you find things that feel like they belong in the cohesive, I think the audience will let you. I just had the experience of re-reading the books because I haven't read them in a long time and I wanted to remember what I had made up and what was originally there. And the interesting thing to be is that though structurally they are very different, I did feel like I was reading the same story that the movie was telling so that's reassuring.
IESB: Looking ahead, they start shooting the next one in October and coming up shortly is a prequel. Are they going to do that one as well?
AA: Who knows, there are seven books in total, Voyage of the Dawn Treader is well underway and we're certainly thinking about the Silver Chair as we make Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and then beyond that I think it really depends on whether there's an appetite for them. If those films do well then I'm sure the studios will want to keep making them. The Magician's Nephew, the prequel that you mentioned, is one of my favorite books and I would love to see that made. It's a very mystical story with some beautiful imagery in it. So I hope they all get made.
IESB: This movie, Caspian, was a bit darker, not much but with Peter jealous, like right off the bat they didn't quite like Caspian which is different than the book, how do you approach Walden or Disney with an idea to change something, change some elements to differ from the C.S. Lewis version?
AA: Both studios are always fine with it, the challenge could've been more with the estate, they are very involved. Douglas Gresham, Lewis' step-son, is very involved in the process and I always run stuff by him and say, "does this still feel true to the book?" But, the thing for me is certainly that the conflict and competition between Peter and Caspian didn't exist in the book. But, it's completely inherit to who they are as characters. So, as long as it feels like it belongs and is integral then no one really has trouble accepting it. Doug, I have to say, was very open to all that. He understood that the book was written for young children and the movie is being made for a broader audience. I kind of looked at it, if this was a real thing that happened, C.S. Lewis wrote a book for little kids about it and I'm making the movie of the real event and just wherever possible I tried to draw from an imagined reality of which this book was simplified.
IESB: Looking ahead, there are some rumors you may be involved with Benighted, are you going to be directing that movie?
AA: Possibly, yes, I certainly am involved in developing it with Graham King and with the intention of potentially directing it, it's still fairly early in stages but Graham bought it for me to do and I'm curious to see how it unfolds. But, it's a very interesting social commentary, I don't know if you are familiar with the book, but it's dealing with a world of which is principally werewolves of which there is a small percentage of the population that aren't werewolves but are kept around as a control for that one night a month when they turn to wolves. And it deals with some of the ideas of apartheid and a police state in a somewhat fantastic element so it's a story I am very interested it.
IESB: And if that does go forward, when do you think...
AA: I'm taking a year off of doing anything really. (laughing) I mean, I'm going to stay involved with developing a few things to see what bubbles forward, that's probably one of the larger scale of things, I've also got a couple of things that are much more...largely I just want to clear my head and remember what it was like not to have any homework. (laughing) And see what I feel like doing after I've had some time to think about it.
IESB: You seem to enjoy the fantastical realm with the Narnia films and even with Shrek, do you ever see yourself doing a little independent comedy or something? Or do you prefer to do these bigger films?
AA: I never intended to do these kind of films, I was actually planning to, I actually started writing some smaller independent things before I got involved with Shrek. I think it's one of those things that I've had some success doing them and that' lead to other opportunities to do something similar. I want to do something smaller just from the point of view of not having the weight of machine that it takes to make the big films so I can experiment a little bit more. You have to be so sure of your ideas when you just got the expense and expectations involved with some of these bigger films. And I would love to do some things that I can be a bit experimental with. So I hope to do some small things.
IESB: The Lord of the Rings films kind of paved the way for the Narnia films. Now with the new Hobbit films, Guillermo del Toro is not only adapting the Hobbit book, but also completely coming up with a whole separate film to bridge The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and has to come up with that whole story. Do you think, Wow that's a much bigger challenge than anyone has done because you have to create 2 new hours inside that known world. Or do you think it will be pretty easy for del Toro?
AA: I personally, having been through, gosh that's a good question, having been through having to adapt books and having to create something from scratch with Shrek 1 and 2, and then having these ones which are adaptations, they both have their advantages and their disadvantages. Sometimes, trying to make something work logistically that is not something you would have inherently put in the story, in this movie [Caspian] the gorge. The idea of going to the gorge, seeing Aslan or not seeing Aslan, turning around, going back downriver finding you can't cross the river and going back up to the gorge, it's not cinematically something I would have chosen to tell but it's something that was inherent in the book and I had to find a way of achieving it in a way that was still cinematically satisfying. Sometimes adaptation is more difficult because of that, but on the other hand invention can be difficult because you get some inspiration from something, you are given a source to fire ideas off and when you're starting from scratch, you're starting from a blank piece of paper. But then, with a blank piece of paper you can fill it in with whatever you like and that's very freeing. So, I think, either one has the challenges. In some ways, I think in the case of the Hobbit, I think adapting the Hobbit is going to be harder than coming up with a new story.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is open in theaters everywhere!
{zoomcat catid=636}
 |
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
