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Within two weeks after it opened, Robert Iger, the CEO at Disney also cited the summer scheduling as one of the reasons why Prince Caspian faltered, saying, “I think there are too many movies being released in the marketplace. It’s a very delicate, very fragile marketplace.” And they couldn’t see that before? Still, Iger called it, “a good lesson,” saying, “It just informs us that much more of what we need to do.”

The lesson was learnt on December 24, 2008, when Disney announced that they would no longer be producing the follow-up film The Voyage of the Dawn Treader with Walden Media. Their reason was said to be “budgetary considerations and other logistics.” Now, almost anything could come under the vague “other logistics.” However, there’s a theory that Disney wanted the film to fail so that they could get out of having to produce a third film and split earnings with Walden Media, hence the mismanaged marketing. Given the huge marketing cost for the film I find this hard to believe, though taking into account Prince Caspian’s earnings, it seems logical why Disney would want out.

In January 2009 came the news that 20th Century Fox would co-finance The Voyage of the Dawn Treader with Walden Media. While the third film was in post-production, producer Johnson admitted, “We made some mistakes with Prince Caspian and I don't want to make them again,” describing how it was “a little bit too rough” and too much of a “boys’ action movie.” After the mega budget that Prince Caspian went through, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader had a leaner production budget of around $140 million (eventually topping out to $155 million).

I was actually quite disappointed with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. I found it okay, but it felt like fantasy-lite, going down the now very familiar route like many other fantasy films, leading up to yet another big battle. Prince Caspian looked like more of the same to me, so upon its release I gave it a miss. Having now seen it, I find it to be no better or worse than the previous film. For the first half hour, it’s actually quite boring, though things pick up slightly once Caspian and the Pevensie children meet. In the book they don’t meet till much later and it seems a good move shifting their eventual encounter forward. Following this, it goes down the same "gearing up for battle" path. Peter’s one-on-one duel with Lord Miraz is a nice highlight, but Miraz himself is just not as strong a villain as the White Witch. He has no magical power; he’s just a man. The final battle itself with the Telmarines and Narnians feels overblown and fails to excite.

The Chronicles of Narnia is only three films in. While this franchise managed to get at least some way through the source material, it’s looking very unlikely that it’ll continue. Walden Media’s contract with the C.S. Lewis Estate has now expired, meaning that they no longer own the rights to produce another Narnia film. One thing is for sure, Disney is unlikely to let any more Andrew’s that have previously worked as animators helm their big budget productions.

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