This week’s mailbag is a little bit late, and I apologize for that.  I had some stuff to get done this week, and I’ve started doing a new project.  Not to mention that I have been a little sick, so I’ve gotten a lot of extra sleep lately.  Not that it has anything to do with this.  Anyway, let’s get to it, some interesting letters came in this week.

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Here we are with this week’s mailbag!  It’s been pretty exciting to see the response that we’ve gotten so far, and I’ve had a great time writing them.  Hopefully the e-mails keep coming in each week so that I can continue.

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Producer Mark Johnson has spoken about how they were putting the promotion together for Prince Caspian and what thoughts they had for how to capture a wider audience for the film than the first had.

When Mark Johnson was producing “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” released in 2005, he and Walt Disney Pictures were careful to hew to a PG rating.  ”We were always concerned that we didn’t want to make it too young, and were worried in our campaign about exposing some of the talking animals. We thought an older audience might say it’s just for little kids,” Johnson said.

He found the problem reversed for last year’s film sequel, “Prince Caspian.”  ”The second was accused of being too old. What happened [is that] it was less about the Narnian creatures than human creatures,” Johnson said.

The second film grossed $420 million at the global box office, while the first raked in $745 million.

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We now present to you, this week’s mailbag.  I’m losing track of the days of the week these days.  It’s been one crazy week, that’s for sure!  Look out for Kansas City’s Union Station launch of The Narnia Exhibition, opening tomorrow!  A press release will be available shortly.  Just to give you the heads up on other stories that I’m working on: both involve Narnia art.  Look for those as well, this evening.  Let’s get to the letter answering!

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The Crafting Of Narnia won Kids Choice at The NZ Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults! Weta has a limited supply of books signed by Paul Tobin and Daniel Falconer!

Written and designed by the artists of Weta and published by HarperCollins, this book chronicles the stunning concept drawings, designs and props that helped shape the world of Narnia in cinematic glory.

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I apologize for being late with this week’s mailbag.  Wednesday was the season finale of Lost and then Thursday was the season finale of The Office.  It was a very busy week besides all of that as well.  Anyway, let’s get started.

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As many fans know, Ben Barnes claimed during auditions for Prince Caspian that he could ride a horse. It turned out to be a stretch of the truth as he had only been on a horse once when he was very small. So they trained him in horseback riding.

While filming Easy Virtue, the last part of shooting involved a big and expensive fox hunt on horseback. The director, Stephan Elliot comments:

“Ben really wanted to ride in the hunt scene, which was the last thing we shot, but the insurance company wouldn’t let him. It was such a shame because he’d learned to ride for Prince Caspian and he knew he was good on a horse.  I put all the money we had left into this hunt and it looked great, so I just said, ‘Ben, get on the horse.’ He was thrilled… The producers found out too late and I could see them rushing to the set, where they’d attempt to pull him off the horse.  I yelled, ‘Action,’ the hunt took off and Ben rode his horse straight into a tree, was thrown off and knocked himself out. He was fine but for a minute there, I was really concerned… but I thought, ‘Well I’ve got what I need and they can’t take the film away from me.’ The insurance company guys were not happy.”

Ben Barnes is currently preparing for his return to Narnia in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; shooting starts this July in Australia.

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This week’s mailbag features a topic that is very interesting to me: that of the relationship of J.R.R. Tolkien and his writing to C.S. Lewis and his.  Other topics include what Anna Popplewell and William Moseley are up to next, and Andrew Adamson’s past in Papua New Guinea.  I’ll see if I have the time to reach back into the mailbag archives after the five letters that I received this week.  Be sure to look through the comments from last week’s mailbag for some fascinating follow-up information as well!  Let’s get started!

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Congratulations to Ben Barnes, who has been nominated for the MTV Movie Award for Breakthrough Performance – Male, for the 2009 awards.  Thanks for voting for the nominees, Narnia Fans!  It certainly helped him win the nomination!

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For this week’s Mailbag, I looked in my inbox and realized a couple of things: first, there was only one e-mail for this week’s mailbag.  I could take this to mean that it’s not a good feature to bring back, but that would be ridiculous.  I enjoy the chance to answer e-mails and also to put my own voice into the site just a little bit.

On a related note, I share Andrew Adamson’s birthday.  Who knew?  Andrew, if you’re reading this, that must be the reason we have similar creative minds.

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