Producer Mark Johnson, who is currently working on many projects including The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, was recently on the other side of the camera for the third time.  He previously appeared in Good Morning, Vietnam and The Notebook.  He was also a producer on both films.  Most recently, he appeared as Uncle Pervis in the film My Sister’s Keeper.  For those who don’t know what the film is about, it is an adaptation of a novel of the same name, by Jodi Picoult.

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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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All of this talk about Disney bailing on The Chronicles of Narnia, and we finally have a comment from one of the creative team that is part of the series.  That of producer Mark Johnson.  I had the pleasure of spending a couple of hours with Mr. Johnson in New York last may, a couple of days after having seen Prince Caspian for the first time.  He’s a genuine person, and someone that I feel will do a great job with the series from here on out, should it continue.

He’s commented, though, on Prince Caspian:

“We may have made a mistake in doing PRINCE CASPIAN as the second one,” Johnson said. “Unfortunately, PRINCE CASPIAN is one of the lesser-liked books. We also made a slightly more adult, darker story, and we shouldn’t have.”

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This is the fifth interview in the NYC Prince Caspian series. In this interview, we have producer Mark Johnson talking about the challenges that they faced with bringing Prince Caspian to the screen. He spoke of the difference between the filming of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Prince Caspian, and the possibility of combining Caspian with Dawn Treader.

Mark Johnson: Who have you already talked to?

Paul Martin: Almost everybody

Mark Johnson: So, you all saw the movie last night?

Paul Martin: Yes, very much enjoyed it.

Mark Johnson: Oh, good, perfect.

Reporter: Tell me about the challenges going into a second one. The first is always hard because there are no expectations, but now you have so many expectations. What are those challenges?

Mark Johnson: You know, the first one we were so mindful of the readership, the loyal readership to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and didn’t think we could make a lot of changes. Because we almost felt that the audience was sort of daring us to make a movie that was faithful to the book. I’ve done a lot of movies based on books, from The Natural to Donnie Brasco to My Dog Skip to The Notebook, and a lot of them: we’ve made big changes. We made big changes to The Notebook and The Natural, for instance. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe we just didn’t feel that we could do it. And we were very, I felt, very faithful to it, and that’s what the audience told us. Even to the degree they’d say things like ‘gosh it was so great that you were so true to the book, loved the scene in the frozen waterfall,’ which of course is not in the book, but it just felt that it was in there. On this one, two things: one, we felt that we had the trust of the audience, that they knew that we were not trying to bastardize the books in any way. And we also felt that Prince Caspian the book didn’t really lend itself to a movie. Didn’t lay out as a movie. We were really perplexed. Andrew and I talked, briefly, about possibly combining it with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. So we made some structural changes and elaborated on some things that are in the book. But I think we’re still very faithful to the characters, the journey of the characters, and to the themes of loss of faith and regaining faith that are in the book. But the readership is so strongly loyal and these books are so vivid in so many people’s minds that you just have to be careful about not playing around with them.

Reporter: Did you ever run into any licensing problems using the books? Or how does that work?

Mark Johnson: No, because the C.S. Lewis Estate works sort of hand in hand with us. And, in fact, Douglas Gresham, who is C.S. Lewis’ stepson, is a co-producer of the film with us. So they’re very involved. And they read all of the scripts and are involved in casting and luckily, we have a wonderful partnership with them and we like working with them a lot.

Reporter: You also have a partnership with Walden Media, with the travelling show with the costumes, and what have you. Why did you see a need to keep this going?

Mark Johnson: I’m not involved in that. I know that there’s, right now, a sort of exhibit, I think at Disney World. I’ve never been to it, but I’ve seen what it is. It’s supposed to be as much promoting the books as the movies. And the world of Narnia. And, as it turns out, these movies will be.. in a perfect world every two years we’ll have one out there. So it also keeps them alive.

Reporter: Were you surprised by how much money the first one made? Because there’s a good movie, and there’s a great movie, and then you go beyond into the stratosphere. How surprising was that for you?

Mark Johnson: I know.. I know.. It’s always surprising. People said ‘Oh, you must have seen it coming.’ You didn’t really. That’s a lot of money. We did three quarters of a billion dollars worldwide box office, you know, and we were successful everywhere. You can’t and I can’t take it for granted on this one. People said ‘Oh, of course you’re gonna do fine, you’re a sequel to a successful movie.’ I don’t think that’s true, and there are examples of movies that weren’t that successful. You still have to make a good movie. That kind of money is pretty staggering. But then again, I just heard that Iron Man did thirty-eight million dollars yesterday, so it’s sort of like… numbers.. it’s all sort of relative. You know… who knows. Most of the films I’ve produced have been successful, but nothing on that level. Rain Man did probably about four hundred million worldwide, or something like that, but most of them are much more modest than that. So all of a sudden to happen to do one in those numbers is both exhilarating and a little scary.

Reporter: Do you have a Narnia jet?

Mark Johnson: (laughter) Well, my yacht says The S.S. Narnia. No, there’s no yacht. No, a lot of people share in the success of it. For me, I’ve never done a movie like that. I would see some of those big fantasy effects films, and say ‘how do they do that? how do you do a second unit and a third unit, and visual effects where you have a character talking to a two-inch mouse which is really just a tennis ball on a wire that somebody’s moving around like that, you know. And so I just wanted to do it. And then I just fell in love with the world of Narnia. And what’s great about the franchise is that each book is so different from the one that preceded it and the one that follows it.

Reporter: You mentioned all the things you have to deal with, the CG effects and everything. How important is it to have somebody like Andrew who knows all that stuff?

Mark Johnson: Well, it’s remarkable, because often a director will be involved in a big visual effects film, and he or she will say to the visual effects supervisor: ‘can I do this?’ or ‘can I do that?’ Andrew knows those answers better than anybody. He has a great team around him, but he knows those answers. So that he is invaluable. And yet at the same time, I was telling somebody earlier, the most important thing is that you not… it’s all about characters. It’s all about characters in the story. And so the effects can be great, and the locations are great, but at the end of the day, those are the side-dishes. So what you have to keep mindful of, when you’re looking at dailies there on the set, is ‘do I really care? Is this moment coming across?’ Because it’s so easy to get distracted and say ‘oh good, that explosion went off beautifully there, and the camera moved like this and that.’ But it’s really in the face of an actor and whether or not that actor shows, or can somehow give you the feeling.. the sensation that you want out of him or her.

Reporter: I have no doubt this film will do well, but it is coming out in a summer that is ridiculously overloaded with potential blockbusters. The first movie came out over Christmas. Was there any kind of hesitency to release it in the summer? Especially like this one?

Mark Johnson: Well the first movie made sense for Christmas, and not just the snow. Father Christmas and all of that. It was very much a Christmas film. We were told at the time we were gonna get stomped by King Kong. And we ended up taking care of the big ape. Ironically, the only place in the world that King Kong did better than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is in New Zealand. Which.. Andrew Adamson is from New Zealand, as is Peter Jackson, so I don’t think Andrew took it well. (laughter) But, you know, it’s ideally, I think the adage, or what people want to believe, is that successful movies beget successful movies, so people start going to the movies again, and yeah. It’s really scary. I look at Iron Man is going to do over a hundred million dollars this weekend, and next weekend is Speed Racer. The next weekend is us. The next weekend is Indiana Jones. And there’s The Dark Knight, and a bunch of really good movies coming out there. So hopefully we’ll stick around. There’s no doubt that Indiana Jones will be number one movie of Memorial Day. So we’ll see. It is scary.

Reporter: Because you mentioned the worldwide success of the films, do you notice more of a fervency in the fanbase in England as opposed to the United States? Or is it pretty common across the board?

Mark Johnson: I think it’s pretty common across the board. You know what’s interesting: New Zealand, when we did The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, all of our crew members had read it as children. C.S. Lewis was one of the staples. It’s not quite as across the board in the U.S. But in England and Australia and New Zealand, everybody has read those. And I don’t know if that’s true of just fantasy books in general. And a lot of people have said to me over the past six months, ‘aren’t you worried that fantasy films are falling apart?’ And there are a couple of movies that they could point to. And I always think that those movies just didn’t have the characters, and consequently the heart, that hopefully we have. Because at the end of the day, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the scene that’s most important to me is not the big battles, and flying this and talking lions. It’s really Lucy meeting Mr. Tumnus, and you say that’s sort of the heart and soul of the movie and that’s why the movie works.

Reporter: Andrew said that he had signed on to produce the next one, too. Will you still be a producer, and how do you feel about the next director?

Mark Johnson: Well I think that the perfect person to direct the next movie would be Andrew. And Andrew’s not going to do it. So you say, alright, who’s the perfect person after Andrew? And Michael Apted is a director I admire a lot and he’s very strong with performances and consequently story. And I think The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a perfect movie for him to be doing. And, I think, it’s not that he hasn’t done big visual effects films – he did a James Bond film – but I’m excited about that. And of course Andrew will still be involved. One of the smartest things they did on Harry Potter was have Alfonso Cuarón direct the third one, and in many ways he was not a likely candidate; he had just done Y tu mamá también. He and I had done A Little Princess together, so I knew that he would be perfect for that, but I’m not sure that the world did.

Reporter: What was it about Ben Barnes that fit the role of Prince Caspian?

Mark Johnson: I think it’s…in a strange way you needed to buy him more, as a character who wasn’t sure of himself – who didn’t think he was a prince or a king – than, when at the end of the film, when he becomes that person. In many ways, the key moment is when Aslan says ‘rise kings and queens of Narnia’ and the four Pevensies get up and Caspian stays down, and he says, ‘all of you’ and Caspian says ‘I do not think I am ready.’ I like that Caspian, and that’s what we needed in it. We didn’t need just a good-looking, heroic, self confident young man, but a man who was, I guess, vulnerable. And we saw hundreds and hundreds of actors for that part. And Andrew had originally thought that the Telmarines would be this pirate race, so he liked the idea that they had a Mediterranean accent. Spanish, Italian, French – somewhere in there. So we saw a lot of boys and young men from Spain, Mexico, Italy and it was hard. You need the character, you need the physicality, you need the vulnerability, you need the ability to play that accent. And then, also, in some cases, also be able to speak English well.

Reporter: With the success of the first movie being so huge, was there ever any danger of this one having too much money available to you?

Mark Johnson: Well, that’s an interesting.. there’s never enough money, no matter what you do. I executive produced a film called Ballast that won the Sundance Best Director award, this year, and we did it for nine hundred thousand dollars, and there wasn’t enough money there, and all of a sudden you’re doing a movie that’s seemingly hundreds of millions of dollars and there’s never enough money. But the beauty of making films and not having enough money, from a producer’s standpoint, is that it forces you to be resourceful and inventive, as opposed to, ‘okay, we’ll just sort of throw money at the problem.’ And yet, when you are in this world and you are creating characters, believable characters, it just unfortunately costs a lot of money. There are people who do it, you know, people I’m constantly trying to learn from. I’ve become good friends with Guillermo del Toro because Pan’s Labyrinth was made for a lot less money, and it’s visual effects were pretty remarkable. But, you know, Aslan has to be completely believable. If you don’t believe that’s a real lion, I guess until Liam Neeson’s voice comes out of his mouth, then we’ve failed.

Reporter: At the end, I was getting ready to scream, because ‘Where’s Aslan?’ You guys were really able to milk it, and keep the movie exciting to the very end! Because I was looking for this lion to come.

Mark Johnson: I know… I know… I’m really pleased to hear that. It’s in the book. It’s a hard one, because Lucy’s sister and brothers may be dying in the middle of a battle, and yet she’s having a conversation in a field, you know, with Aslan. And yet, he comes in and wakes the trees and saves the day.

Reporter: Thank you!

Mark Johnson: Thanks everyone, and so long!

Up next, the final interview in the series, before we move onto the next day in the NYC Prince Caspian series. Look for the interview with Ben Barnes, Prince Caspian himself, soon!

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It’s a question that we can’t help but think would please the old theologian himself: Is C.S. Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia” film series dead or isn’t it? First, Disney announced in grand fashion that they would film all seven of Lewis’s books, with a new one coming out each May. Then the rumors started to swirl like the White Witch: Disney wanted to concentrate elsewhere, they wouldn’t commit to any Narnia films after “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” which would mean three films and no more. Producer Mark Johnson himself recently told a packed crowd at New York Comic-Con that “Treader” would, in fact, be the last voyage.

Cue the Great Aslan. No, better yet, cue one of his patented resurrections.

“There is a list,” Johnson revealed to MTV News of a group of dream directors being eyed to bring the fourth Narnia book, “The Silver Chair,” to the big-screen. “We have an eye on who might direct.”

Whoa, Whoa. Back up. You’re talking directors? That strikes me as something nobody does with a dead franchise. Not at the level of “Narnia,” anyway.

In fact, Johnson went on to describe how he envisions that the future of the “Narnia” series may very well wind up like “Harry Potter,” with different, visionary directors brought in to reinvigorate the franchise at each step along the way (a la Alfonso Cuaron).

“I think [the director of "Silver Chair"] will be somebody new entirely,” he said when we asked if that list of helmers included previous directors Andrew Adamson or Michael Apted. “I would like to get somebody totally unexpected.”

So it looks like, for now at least and until the next reversal, that the future of Narnia is a bright and comprehensive one, with Johnson planning on taking us from the beginning (”The Magician’s Nephew“) to the end (“The Last Battle“).

Amid those future adaptations, of course, will be many complications – from mere logistics to figuring out how to navigate Lewis’s increasing sexism, religious allegory, and perceived racism.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say a couple of them I don’t know how to film,” Johnson confessed, adding with a wry smile. “It would be a good problem to have.”

MTV Movies Blog

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We’ve been hearing for quite some time that filming of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was threatened by the WGA Strike. The script has yet to be finished, and Walden Media would have to hold off on filming the third Narnia for a few extra months. The Hollywood Reporter has quoted Narnia film producer Mark Johnson on the development:

Movies in development or preproduction also will get a huge boost as writers get back to work and new scribes are attached.

Mark Johnson, a producer on Walden Media’s “Chronicles of Narnia” movies, said a resolution couldn’t come fast enough for the third movie in the franchise, set to start shooting this year. Johnson added that he thinks “the floodgates will open” for projects in active development or preproduction that need a little script help.

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Our friends at ComingSoon.net had the chance to interview Narnia producer Mark Johnson after the Prince Caspian Comic-Con presentation. They recently put it up on their site with an MP3, but they gave us permission to post a transcript of the interview as well. Listen to the MP3 at ComingSoon.net

CS: Making a follow-up of Narnia, you obviously have the books to work with, but also there are heightened expectations now that the first film was such a success. What do you do to meet those expectations? Follow up by making it bigger, better, or different, or do you have more money?

Mark Johnson: The assumption is that you’ve got to be bigger; you know, the first one was really successful and I just heard myself in this film piece we did, say, “Oh, it’s got to be bigger and better than the last one.” It’s got to be as good, certainly; you don’t want to make a movie that’s not as satisfying, but I think “bigger” is probably wrong. I don’t know if an audience expects the effects to be, you know, more of them or more complicated. But it’s like anything else, you still have to make a good movie. And so people have said, “Were you intimidated about the fact that you got to make another one after the first one worked so well?” What I’m intimidated by is with every movie you’ve just got to make a good movie with compelling characters, and the spectre of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe wasn’t really so much over my shoulder. It’s great we’re a piece of that and you want to make sure that some of the information feeds from that, so that people who enjoyed that movie can enjoy this in a different way. At the same time, you have to assume your audience has never seen that movie and this movie’s got to work completely on its own.

CS: Also, the first film had a certain tone to it, and this movie (because of the book) is going to be darker and grittier, and not maybe as fantastical?

Mark Johnson: I think that’s true. This is a little bit darker. It’s a little bit more adult – it involves some tricky stuff; some things that Caspian discovers about himself and about his uncle, and so it is by definition a little bit darker. And then I think Andrew wanted to test himself. I think that he did a somewhat traditional telling of the last one and I think he wanted to explore a little bit more, and so he used the fact that it was a little darker as a jumping off place.

CS: What are you most excited about for the fans?

Mark Johnson: I think this is really satisfying as a sort of an old … in the Romantic sense – and I don’t mean in “romance” – but just movie-going. It’s just really cool. There’s a lot of action. It has lots of thrills to it. I think the last one was really charming, and sort of magical, and I think this one is a little bit more in your face. We’re still telling a Narnia story so it’s not like we’re doing something more adult just to be adult, but I think the trick is embracing this book and still making it a part of not just the Chronicles, but the mythology of Narnia, and respecting all of that – because it’s all interconnected, and all of the characters have precedence in the other books.

CS: What do you mean by “more in your face”?

Mark Johnson: It’s more action, it’s more immediate. It’s less lyrical. So it’s just more … “This is what’s happened – I’ve got to do something about this – how do we do it – I didn’t do it right – how do we straighten it?” I think that in this one, the characters have crises and conflicts. In the last one it sort of evolved itself into what they had to do. This one is where they really end up questioning themselves.

CS: How challenging was it to bring in all the new characters?

Mark Johnson: Well, we have a new set. You know, we haven’t even seen the character who’s probably going to be the most memorable, who is Reepicheep, who’s this two foot tall mouse. We don’t even know who is doing his voice yet. But it’s a great character. And the challenge is… Reepicheep is a very honorable character who is offended when anybody says “Oh what a dear little creature” because as far as he’s concerned he’s six feet tall and as noble and as sort of heroic as anyone else. So I think you’ve got to be careful that you don’t play him, the character, for laughs, but that what he ends up doing is very funny.

CS: Isis [Mussenden] had mentioned that she felt that the script was more inspiring than the book – it sounded like maybe it was a little more fast-paced. Did you feel the same way, that there were some differences there?

Mark Johnson: Yeah, I do, I think the book was hard to do. A third of the book takes place in flashbacks and we just realized that couldn’t happen in the movie, so we restructured it. Not that I want to say we improved upon it – we didn’t – but for a movie I think it’s slightly different. I think I’m going to find the movie a little bit more satisfying than the book. And you know, obviously there are seven books – you can’t like them all the exact same amount and some are better than others.

CS: Do you think fans of the book are going to be happy with the movie?

Mark Johnson: I think so, because it’s not like we’ve done a terrible injustice to it. With “Lion, the Witch” we didn’t tamper with it that much. But the whole frozen waterfall sequence doesn’t exist in the book. It’s so funny because we had people coming up to us and saying, “Oh, thank God you kept that in there” – you know it wasn’t there [laughter]. I’ve done a number of movies based on books and some of them we made big changes. I did this movie called The Notebook, and we changed it a lot. My Dog Skip and even The Natural, we were criticized for changing the ending. I don’t think any of them were as faithful to the source material as “Lion, the Witch”, and same thing with “Caspian.”

CS: Since this is a series, do you guys find yourselves looking ahead all the time – and I’m assuming that they did that with the Harry Potter series. Are you guys always like, “Okay, what about the kids?”

Mark Johnson: Well here’s the crazy thing. I’ve been on the set of Caspian and we’ve shot for 105, 106 days – I’ve maybe missed 15 – but I just missed some because I went to Malta and Spain to scout locations with Michael Apted for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, so I’m a little schizophrenic right now. It’s like, which characters? And I’m talking to William Moseley and Anna Popplewell who play Peter and Susan, and they’re not in the next one. And so I’m starting to talk to them about it and say, “Oh that’s right, you’re not there”. It’s almost like I’m teasing them: “Oh, and you don’t get to be in it”. Yeah, you’re aware of it and there are certain things that you want to do … I was desperate because I so loved Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Andrew and I talked about it. Was there any way in the world to put him in Prince Caspian? And you can’t! It’s 1300 years later in Narnia and there’s no way to say, “Oh, he’s still alive”. So then we thought, could his great great great grandson …? And no! Not really, and so in that sense you’re aware of the whole fabric of the seven books.

CS: So how do you feel about Michael Apted directing the third film?

Mark Johnson: Oh, I’m really excited about him. I’ve been a fan of his for a while. And I think if you look at his strengths, they’re very different from Andrew’s strengths, and I think that’ll work for it. I think one of the best things that happened to the Harry Potter movies is they switched directors. Alfonso Cuaron and Mike Newells were very different, and each one in its way was even better. And it’s not even so much a quality – I guess there’s a quality of things – but I just think they got better, they benefited from it.

CS: When a director comes in knowing they’re only going to do one of the series, do they ever work together to “pass the torch”?

Mark Johnson: Well I think Andrew and Michael Apted are working really well together. I think Andrew is relieved … it’s so funny, he just read the first draft of the script (because he co-wrote the first two) and he said, “Oh, I was so depressed because there’s so much work to do,” and then he said, “And then I realized – oh, that’s right, I’m not writing it, I don’t have to worry!” So he can just give notes and walk away; he doesn’t have to worry about the solutions.

CS: So is Michael Apted helping with the writing?

Mark Johnson: No, he’s not writing. But Chris Markus and Stephen McFeely who wrote with Andrew on the first two are writing this one, without Andrew.

CS: And you are looking ahead at seven films?

Mark Johnson: As long as the audience still loves them. You know, listen – this next one is the second, and in many ways from a commercial standpoint it’s the more important of the two, because this one will say, “Is the franchise is alive and well?” If the audience doesn’t like this one then we may be in trouble doing all of them. That’s why the intention is to do all seven of them – whether or not we do will depend on the audience.

CS: It’s different in that it’s not like a Harry Potter kind of thing where each book is another year and you’re following the same characters in the same situations – this is like jumping centuries, millennia, different characters…

Mark Johnson: And at some point we’ll do The Magician’s Nephew, and the kids aren’t even in it, and there are a couple of shared characters but not many. And The Horse and His Boy is altogether different.

CS: It makes it a very problematical kind of franchise, because the only thing linking it, really, is the universe.

Mark Johnson: Right. The only character who is in all seven – and I may be wrong, but I think I’m right about it – is Aslan. And in The Magician’s Nephew, Aslan sings Narnia into life, and the uncle who is in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, whose house they go to stay at, is the young boy in that one, and they’re all tied together. The wardrobe is made from wood that was brought back from The Magician’s Nephew.

CS: How many times have you read the series?

Mark Johnson: Not as many as I should have. Seriously! And somebody asked me the other day, “Which characters are in The Silver Chair?” And I stumbled a little bit because I’d forgotten. So it’s not like I’m a fanatic. I talk to people all the time who tell me that the series changed their lives – but that wasn’t the case; I mean I loved the books, but there are a bunch of other books I loved at the same time too.

CS: How hard is it for you that you’re working on the second film, but you’re already kind of working on the third one as well?

Mark Johnson: It’s difficult. Between The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian I did three other movies, and one of them’s a movie that opens next month called The Hunting Party, with Richard Gere and Terrence Howard and Jesse Eisenberg. So it’s really good to get away and exercise muscles you’d forgotten you have.

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The producer of the new Narnia film Prince Caspian says there’s been no change to New Zealand’s involvement in the project.

New Zealander Tim Coddington says reports Disney has axed plans to make the sequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe here are wrong.

He says he understands the role New Zealand will play in the film is still the same and details are expected this week.

The chief executive of Film New Zealand, Judith McCann, says the industry always knew the film’s entire production would not be based in New Zealand.

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“The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” is the sequel to a blockbuster that reportedly cost $180 million and grossed more than $745 million worldwide. It begins shooting on February 12, 2007 in New Zealand and then moves to Prague before ultimately finishing production next August.

Somewhere in the middle of those two films is “Spring Break in Bosnia,” which stars Terrence Howard and Richard Gere and will be released by The Weinstein Company.

Currently, Johnson has a production deal with Walden Media to make G and PG-rated movies (from which has come the “Narnia” franchise and “How to Eat Fried Worms”). He is free to take his other movies anywhere. We reached Johnson in Prague, where he is deep into pre-production on the “Narnia” sequel.

HWT: “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” is the kind of movie that Walt Disney has said it will focus on in its new plan to make 10 or branded films a year. Has this new strategy trimmed your budget or given you more financial freedom?

Mark Johnson: We are having big budget discussions with Disney right now, but I think we would’ve had them two years ago. When you start making a movie on this scale, everything becomes scrutinized and questioned.

HWT: Sequels to successful movies always cost more than the first. Is that the case with the second “Narnia”?

Mark Johnson: I cant comment on that but it’s a good assumption.

HWT:You produce movies at every budget level, mixing it up between intimate dramas and massive event films. What are you looking for in a project?

Mark Johnson: Primarily, it’s characters that interest me, followed by relationships. I’m usually less interested in the big, bombastic stuff than I am in the smaller, more intimate stuff. Look at movies I’ve done like “A Little Princess,” “Donnie Brasco,” “The Rookie” or for that matter “The Notebook.” They are all smaller, more intimate character relationship movies. I would maintain that “Narnia” is that movie. For me, the heart and soul of the movie is the relationships with the kids. If I had an underlying theme of my movies, I would say it’s family. All of those films have to do with families, families you are either born into, like “Avalon”, or families that you create like “A Little Princess.”

HWT: You hear constant complaints from producers that movies are harder and harder to get made. Now that studios have all but abandoned the mid-level dramas, how difficult is it to make these smaller, more intimate films?

Mark Johnson: What happens when you make a movie like “In the Bedroom,” which I’m a big fan of, it’s got to work perfectly. Every element has to work. Otherwise, it becomes one of 30 odd movies that get made that year that are well intentioned but (that have) no compelling reason for an audience to see them. You’ve got to hit them just right, whereas if you go off and do a big action movie, you can have a performance that doesn’t work or an action scene that’s not as good as the others, but the total makes up for it. I call those smaller films “landmine films,” because any false step and the whole movie blows up.

HWT: Are independents more eager to work with established film makers who are willing to work on a smaller scale, or do they want fresh talent?

Mark Johnson: It depends. But there more established directors and actors today have quite frankly priced themselves out of the market. A lot of studios big and small say, “We can’t make those deals any more. We would rather go with somebody and take a chance on them, whether or not he or she is a first or second time director.

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Infuze Magazine is now defunct.  I’ve put the entire interview here for archival purposes.

Very few people have had the success in Hollywood that producer Mark Johnson has enjoyed. Whether working on Oscar-winning pictures such as Bugsy or Rain Man or blockbusters such as the Narnia series, The Notebook or What Lies Beneath, Johnson seems to have the Midas Touch.

Johnson’s latest projects include the recently released How To Eat Fried Worms and the upcoming Prince Caspian. Recently, he sat down to talk to Infuze’s Matt Conner to discuss these films, the power of storytelling, and the role of producer.

Matt: You’ve worked on Oscar-winning films, summer blockbusters, and movies in seemingly every genre. When you’ve worked on so many projects, what do you still aim toward in producing films?

Mark Johnson: Well, no matter how many films you’ve done, you’re still aiming toward producing an original story with characters that are relatable. This doesn’t always mean they have to be sympathetic characters. Sometimes you are drawn by the simple heroes. However, in the end, I’m always drawn to movies by their characters first and then by the plot.

If you look at movies that I’ve done, they are about people and not about the story as much. When I go to movies and see Bruce Willis in a Die Hard, if it is entertaining, I am as happy as the next person. But its not… Well, for some reason I am just more into something focused on the characters than anything else…

This latest movie, How To Eat Fried Worms, is like that. It’s really about what this boy goes through personally.

Let’s talk about that. Can you tell us more about the movie?

Sure! Well, here the screenwriter and director are the same person [Bob Dolman] and he said, “I want to do this movie next.” He and I started talking about why it would be a worthwhile movie. The story was good and fun. It was a lot of fun actually and made me laugh.

Did you read the book?

You know, I didn’t. At first, I was barely aware of the book. Bob Dolman finally turned me on to the story by the time I read the book. Then I thought this is a pretty original story and yet it’s about conflicts that are very common, especially when you’re a young kid. You’re in a new town and trying to fit in and you may say and do things that go against your character. (Laughs.)

Can you relate to that? Is that what drew you to it?

You know, we moved all the time when I was growing up. I grew up in Spain and it seems like every year I was in different school. It was hard. And yet, I was always aware of what I had to do to fit in.

Which is?

Well, you try sometimes and conform to other boys as opposed to staying true to yourself, but the message of this movie is staying true to yourself. And it is true that people will end up appreciating you if you simply stay true to who you are, and that’s what the movie is ultimately about.

You’re working with Walden Media on Worms, but that’s not the only movie you are working with them on. You’re also in the middle of the second installment of The Chronicles of Narnia, correct?

Yes.

What can you tell us about the upcoming Prince Caspian movie?

Well, we’re not even shooting yet. We start shooting shortly after the first of the year. February actually. We have moved the movie and it is now being released in the summer of 2008.

Working with Andrew Adamson again?

Yes.

How is this process differing from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe?

You know, it’s an interesting challenge. Many of the elements from the first film will be involved in Price Caspian, but it’s also an original story on its own. Some of the characters from the last one will be back in the new movie and some of them will not repeat.

The children are coming back for this film…

Yes, all four of the Pevensie children are coming back.

Is that a challenge since they are obviously growing up?

Yes, but we are very lucky because C.S. Lewis created a distance between The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. The children are meant to be a year older. So what ends up happening is that we, as the film, are allowed to cheat a bit because the children aren’t supposed to look the same.

What about these books? Have you read them?

Yes, definitely!

Did you read them as a kid?

Yes, but I don’t think I read all of them. Honestly I can’t remember why I didn’t’ read them all. But I definitely read The Magician’s Nephew and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I also know that I read The Voyage of The Dawn Treader. That’s the one we are doing third. Actually, I should say that if we do a third one, that will be the one we choose to do.

What do you think it is about the Narnia series that made the film so successful?

I think Lewis did a masterful job of creating the world of Narnia. It’s a world of all of us would like to visit. It’s a world in which our heroes were really disempowered or unempowered children. All of a sudden, their father is away at WWII and they are lost and they find themselves in a magical world in which they are required to save it. It’s just a fantastic place and yet the heroes are just like us.

Switch gears a bit, I want to talk more about your role. Can you tell us more about the role of producer? What exactly does the job look like?

Hmm… it’s interesting. It puts the whole enterprise together. You’re involved in the making of the movie, the development of the script, and a great deal of everything else from marketing to editing. And yet, you’re not the final creative voice. That’s up to the director. He or she has the final say. The producer really needs to be supportive of the director’s vision.

Do you find you have a certain style of production?

I like to think that making movies is very hard. It takes lots of work and long hours. So I think I am low key and enthusiastic to keep things going, to keep morale up. You hope the movie entertains and makes a difference at the same time. Also, it’s not life or death so you make it an enjoyable process for those involved.

Is that hard to balance when you are dealing with millions of dollars, deadlines, and so forth?

Yes! You just have to keep at it. It’s very difficult. You need to put everything in perspective. It’s hard in that you’re dealing with lots of money, lots of talent an dyet at the same time, we aren’t saving lives or curing cancer. In fact, we tend to get dramatic and operatic about the whole thing. It’s hard – lots of money, loots of talent and yet at the same time, we aren’t saving lives or curing cancer. We tend to get dramatic and operatic.

Right now, you’re also working on a fascinating project entitled Spring Break in Bosnia…

Yes, it’s a very exciting project. It was written and directed by Richard Shepard, who also wrote and directed The Matador, which had a sly sense of humor and yet was a character piece. We have a wonderful cast with Richard Gere, Terrence Howard and Jesse Eisenberg. I think it’s about characters in this case. It’s set in the exotic world of Eastern Europe and it’s about three journalists who go through some very, very strong soul searching in a scary and funny world.

With all of the successful films you’ve made, there have to be some that you passed on only to regret it later.

Sure! I didn’t pass on it, but I was shown The Usual Suspects and I knew it was a good script, but I couldn’t do anything about it. So I watched that go on and become a very good movie. That was hard.

I was also shown Crash at one point early on. I didn’t have an opportunity to do anything with it. It was not the right time for me to get involved, but at the same time… I’m a huge fan of the movie now and I’m sorry for not being involved.

You mentioned your love for characters before, but what makes a good character?

I think a character in crisis. It doesn’t need to be a big, dramatic crisis. You don’t have to have a gun pulled on him or something like that. Sometimes this means having nothing more than being faced with a significant moral decision. You want to see a character that is like yourself, someone having to make decisions having to affect his life. For me, that’s as important as anything else.

What would you say is your career highlight?

Hmm… I can’t think of one. Isn’t that funny? I mean, I’m not sure. There are so many movies that I am so proud of. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe would be one, And A Little Princess… That’s as close to a perfect movie as I’ll ever come. It’s not a perfect movie, but for me it is. Rain Man. Galaxy Quest on some days still makes me laugh. It all depends on what you’re doing, I guess. It comes and goes. (Laughs.)

Ok, do you have a personal favorite film you’ve worked on?

Yes, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was a great experience. We were in New Zealand and it was just great there. We had a cast and crew made up of New Zealanders, Australians, British and Americans and it was just a magical event. We were all setting out in doing something that was important to us all. I think we all felt an obligation to get it right.

Because of C.S. Lewis?

Yes, because the book meant something to all of us.

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