By Laura Mills, The Greymouth Evening Star

A large base camp supporting 200 cast and crew from the blockbuster Hollywood series of Narnia movies, has been set up in an old quarry near Lake Moeraki, in South Westland.

The film crew arrived at the weekend in a fleet of 40 trucks.

The scarcity of accommodation in South Westland means some are having to stay in Wanaka for the next week, a five-hour round trip from the film set.

Essential staff are helicoptered in to the set on Department of Conservation-managed land at the mouth of the Moeraki River. Numbers are capped at 60 people.

Publicist Ernie Malik said filming got under way yesterday after some rain.

Better weather is forecast.

As the film employs four children, two of them minors, they can only work certain hours.

However, filming should still be wrapped up in about three days. In a few weeks’ time, everyone will move next to the Czech Republic.

“On February 21 we were filming in Auckland. Four days later, on the 25th, we’re in a remote area in the South Island,” Mr Malik said.

“It’s quite a feat –we’ve some 40 vehicles that had to be driven from Auckland, on to the ferry and across Cook Strait. It was all up and running by Sunday morning.

The base camp in the quarry might be remote, by Mr Malik said it had all the conveniences of home.

“It’s like a little city—we even have wireless internet access. We’re sitting in the middle of a rock quarry.”

There was a food tent big enough to seat for 200, although some food was being flown in to the set. A truck carried portable toilets and there was even hot water on tap, he said.

This is the first major film to be shot in South Westland—Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson did not shoot any scenes from the trilogy in Westland.

Prince Caspian, the follow up to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is being directed by Auckland film-maker, Andrew Adamson. In this movie, the four children—Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy—find themselves back in Narnia.

The first film had a budget of about $US180 million and grossed an estimated $739 million worldwide. According to the Internet Movie Database, it was the 22nd highest grossing movie of all time.

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The New Zealand Herald reports that Prince Caspian filming in the Cathedral Cove area of Hahei has brought about mixed reactions from locals and tourists.

Coromandel locals are frustrated that conservation officials gave producers of the latest Narnia film exclusive access to a popular beach, shutting out hundreds of tourists.

For the past two weeks, Los Angeles film company Wimbleweather has been shooting open scenes for the second CS Lewis adaptation, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, in parts of Hahei, 56km north of Whangamata.

The production company applied to the Department of Conservation to close Cathedral Cove — the main tourist attraction in Hahei — for two days last week. Approval was given and a notice sent to residents and business owners: “Cathedral Cove will be closed … for safety reasons associated with operational activities including heavy lift helicopter and filming activity.”

Andy Williams, owner of Hahei ice cream and pizza shop Leb Parlour, said that while he enjoyed getting late-night orders of 20 pizzas from the film’s crew, the closure of Cathedral Cove had adversely affected the town’s trading. “It is at the height of European tourist time, and the town was dead when they were up filming there,” Williams said.

Hahei General Store owner Pauline Verran said that although they brought “lots of Red Bull, cigarettes and phone cards”, the movie makers brought their own chefs and supplies to the town, rather than supporting locals. Verran said tourists who traveled to the region specifically to see the spectacular Cathedral Cove were turned away. “People look at it on the internet and come here to see the cove. An American couple told me it was on the most beautiful places in the world list, but they couldn’t go there.”

But Wendy Helms and Russ Cochrane, operators of Cathedral Cove Dive and Snorkel which has the town’s sole fuel pump, are disappointed to see the back of the fantasy-film makers with seemingly “bottomless budgets”. The crew spent $10,000 on fuel while they were in town, doubling the business’s normal sales figures.

Ernie Malik, spokesman for Wimbleweather, which is named after a fairytale giant, said the company had no knowledge of Hahei vendors who were inconvenienced due to filming, but when asked if the producers were apologetic, he said: “If I say no, I’m going to sound like an ogre.”

Harukai area manager for DOC John Gaukrodger told the Herald on Sunday that the decision to restrict public access to Cathedral Cove for a period of two days was made with an eye on the bigger picture. “It is unfortunate that some people missed out, but if we think longer term, there could well be some benefits [for the region]. The cove was promoted to us as an ideal spot [by the producers].”

Gaukrodger said the Californian production company removed graffiti from the rock faces at the cove before filming commenced – “We would never have done it ourselves,” he laughed.

The company will be billed for using the beach. Locals hope the money will be used to help restore two hectares of native bush which was destroyed in a fire last month.

In Prince Caspian, directed by New Zealander Andrew Adamson, the four Pevensie children return to Narnia, to find that hundreds of years have passed since they ruled there, and the evil King Miraz is in charge. With a heroic mouse and the exiled heir to the throne, Prince Caspian, they set out to overthrow the king, once again with Aslan’s help. The set for the ruins of their old castle, Cair Paravel, has been built on a peninsula adjacent to Hahei. The large crew is now filming on the west coast of the South Island.

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Pierfrancesco Favino will be playing Glozelle in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

From Narnia.com: Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino has been cast as Gen. Glozelle, the leader of Miraz’ Telmarine troops. Favino recently played Christopher Columbus in “Night at the Museum”.

Welcome to Narnia, Pierfrancesco!

[View our Pierfrancesco Favino page, here on NarniaFans.com!]

Thanks to bill, Anna Milograno, Ben, Abby, and Claire Rossell for the news.. I was out at a retreat all weekend.

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digmo.co.uk has created a Widget for us. For any of you that has a Mac, you can now get NarniaFans.com news updates right on your desktop!

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The Queensland government hopes a giant outdoor water tank on the Gold Coast will attract a series of Hollywood blockbusters to the state.

Arts Minister Rod Welford said the $2.1 million tank at Warner Roadshow Studios, currently being used to film the Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey film, Fool’s Gold, would be a trump card for drawing other big-money blockbusters.

Mr Welford said the tank, which can house boats and marine life, allowed for large-scale under and above water filming and was the only one of its kind in the southern hemisphere, and one of only a few worldwide.

The tank is 40 metres by 30 metres and varies in depth from two to five metres.

The government contributed $500,000 to the tank, which is also funded by Fool’s Gold production and Warner Roadshow Studios.

“The government’s Pacific Film and Television Commission and Warner Roadshow Studios are currently in negotiations with a number of major studios requiring water tank facilities for their next major films,” Mr Welford said.

He said projects that could be drawn to the state included the $100 million production Voyage of the Dawn Treader – the [third] in the Narnia Chronicles series.

Major productions to have used similar tanks include Titanic and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Thanks to Anna for sending us this story.

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On a recent Friday night, 30 fans of the writer C. S. Lewis sat in folding chairs under a vaulted ceiling surrounded by gilt-framed oil paintings of Episcopal priests. Like Lucy Pevensie, the youngest of the four children in Lewis’s book “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” who opens a wardrobe to discover the icy land of Narnia, the members of the New York C. S. Lewis Society immerse themselves in the writer’s fantastical realm.

Members of the group, which calls itself the oldest society in the world for the appreciation of Lewis’s works, gather on the second Friday of every month in the parish hall of the Church of the Ascension at 12 West 11th Street in Greenwich Village.

Among those at the latest meeting were Margaret Goodman, 70, an opera singer and actress who wore a small golden lion pin, and Christopher Mitchell, the director of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College in Illinois, which has the world’s largest holding of papers and books by Lewis.

The society’s secretary, Clara Sarrocco, 60, traces her obsession to when she was 16, attending a Catholic high school in Queens, where she lives. “One of my teachers came in and mentioned a book written from one demon to another demon,” she said of Lewis’s “Screwtape Letters.” “Real diabolical-sounding.”

When she was in her 20s, Ms. Sarrocco clipped an advertisement for the society from a magazine. “I stuck it in my mirror,” she said. “Every time I looked in the mirror, I kept on saying, ‘I have to go there.’ I was a little intimidated.”

But her curiosity won out. Since the early 1970s, Ms. Sarrocco has been part of the society, which has about 500 subscribers to its twice-a-month bulletin from across the country and abroad, including Japan, Germany, Russia and England.

Lewis, who was born in Ireland in 1898, was a leading figure on the English faculty at Oxford University and was part of a literary group there known as the Inklings, which included J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of the “Lord of the Rings” books.

The Lewis society’s longest active members are a married couple, Alexandra and James Como. He is a Lewis scholar and the chairman of the Department of Performing and Fine Arts at York College in Jamaica, Queens, part of the City University of New York.

[Read the rest at the New York Times.]
We welcome members of any C.S. Lewis Society to become members of our forum, as well as join us on our podcast, as a guest or a regular correspondent. Just send us an e-mail to nfc @ narniafans.com (remove the spaces).

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From thetowntalk.com: The public is invited to hear Emile Griffin explore the lives and friendship of best-selling authors J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis in a lecture set for Thursday at the Alexandria Museum of Art. The lecture, sponsored by Louisiana State University at Alexandria, is set for 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the museum, the university has announced. There is no admission charge.

Griffin, a native of New Orleans, is a professional writer and editor who began her career in advertising before eventually ending up in the literary world. Once named Advertising Copywriter of the Year by the Advertising Club of New Orleans, Griffin now focuses on writing about Christian spirituality. She has authored 15 books on this topic. She is editor of the HarperCollins Spiritual Classics. She and her husband, William Griffin, an authority on C.S. Lewis, were founding members of the Chrysostom Society, a national writers group formed in the 1980s. For more information, call Dr. Eamon Halpin at (318) 473-6581.

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Producer Ralph Winter was recently interviewed by Infuze Magazine and they asked him about the status of The Screwtape Letters.

What’s happening with C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters?

It’s in development with Fox and Walden Media. Fox has owned the property for decades. They bought it in the 50s. There was management at Fox that wanted it and bought it, and they’ve owned it for decades.

So what’s the current status?

We’re signing deals right now. We’re finishing the Fox option deal, we’re finishing my deal with Walden. Doug Gresham’s deal is done.

Does the movie have a green light?

Not yet. We’ve been talking to Randall Wallace about writing and directing. We need to have more discussions with Fox and Walden about that, and make sure that Randy’s still available. Everybody wants to make this movie; I think it’s going to happen, I just don’t know what the timetable is right now.

We’re very excited about that. With the right script, dealing with temptation and that whole upside down world, it could be a very, very interesting movie. And it’s going to be dark. This isn’t a light, happy, Narnia piece.

The C.S. Lewis name alone should be enough to draw people into the theaters.

We’ve been telling people that for years, and they wouldn’t believe it. And now that Narnia has happened, they’re a lot more open to it. (Laughs.)

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We’ve just posted the twenty-fifth edition of the NarniaFans Mailbag. We’ve answered four letters this week from such topics as the film release dates, the rating for Prince Caspian, the Ultimate Fan Contest, Narnia Countdown Clocks (Help Wanted!) and we’ve been given the Turkish Delight recipe that used to be found on narnia.com!

Click here for the twenty-fifth NarniaFans Mailbag!

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Ken Stott will be playing Trufflehunter in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

From the Press Release: Veteran Scottish actor Ken Stott (”Casanova,” “King Arthur”) will lend his vocal talents to the role of Trufflehunter, the faithful badger who believes the former Kings and Queens of Narnia will return to assist Caspian in his quest.

Welcome to Narnia, Ken!

[View our Ken Stott page, here on NarniaFans.com!]

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