July (Web-only) 2002

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Shrekdirector Andrew Adamson will direct The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe film
"As we've seen with Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, bringing to the screen a literary fantasy classic, beloved by millions of readers, requires both a reverence for the original material and a rich imagination to create a realistic fictional world," Walden Media CEO Cary Granat said in a press release Wednesday. "Andrew Adamson knows better than anyone how to create magic on-screen and tell a story which touches the heart of an audience. His expertise in visual effects, animation, and live action will be critical to a fantasy work of this magnitude."

So far, there's been little buzz about the appointment at the Mere Lewis e-mail list (which is on hiatus this week) or on the alt.books.cs-lewis newsgroup. Note, however, that though Shrek was extremely well received by both mainstream and Christian critics and filmgoers (one negative review in Books & Culture got absolutely pilloried by readers and other critics), Adamson also worked as visual effects supervisor on the terrible Batman Forever and Batman and Robin—films that did anything but show "reverence for the original material." Of course, he wasn't director of those films, either—but he did win Academy Award nominations for both.

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Walden also named South African Ann Peacock, who won an Emmy for the HBO film A Lesson Before Dying, as the screenwriter.

All well and good, and Weblog hates to be a total wet blanket years before the project comes out. But here's something to worry about. Walden Media is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Anschutz Company, which is, according to its website, "the largest shareholder of the outstanding common stock of Qwest." (Philip Anschutz, who funds Walden ...