Netflix has hired “Coco” screenwriter Matthew Aldrich to oversee its live-action adaptations of C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia” book series as films and TV shows.
Aldrich will serve as a creative architect on all projects under the deal. He most recently co-wrote “Coco” with Adrian Molina for Disney and Pixar Animation Studios. The film won the Academy Award for best animated feature and grossed over $800 million worldwide.
Netflix and the C.S. Lewis Company announced in October that they had struck a multi-year deal for Netflix to develop stories from across the Narnia universe into series and films. All series and films produced through the deal will be Netflix productions, with Mark Gordon of Entertainment One (eOne) alongside Douglas Gresham and Vincent Sieber serving as executive producers for series and as producers for features.
The seven Narnia books have sold more than 100 million copies and been translated in more than 47 languages worldwide. The first three — “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” “Prince Caspian” and “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” — were adapted into movies, which grossed more than $1.5 billion worldwide between 2005 and 2010.
The other four books are “The Silver Chair,” “The Horse and His Boy,” “The Magician’s Nephew, and “The Last Battle.” The books were published between 1950 and 1956. The stories center on children from the real world as the protagonists being magically transported to the fantasy world of Narnia, where they are often called upon by the lion Aslan to protect Narnia.