By Lillie Jaenchen
It should be noted that the most successful book ever published/printed, by orders of magnitude, is the Bible. People have been copying, printing, buying, selling and reading the Bible for 2000 years. There seems to be something about the narrative of redemption and self-sacrifice that resonates with the very core of western humanity. Now, whether you believe the Christian story or not, it remains a key historical and psychological narrative, and it has a powerful emotional impact which has not only passed, but excelled the test of time. It has been 2000 years since the events of The New Testament. Will the writings of JK Rowling, Tolkien, or even CS Lewis have the same longevity?
The commercial opportunities that come with this cultural saturation cannot afford to be ignored. The treatment of Lewis’ material can either detract from the core preferences of the modern western mindset, or it can speak to them, and tap into them at a very emotional level. Netflix is in a key position to capitalize on this. It is a business opportunity that should be recognized and carefully nurtured.
The commercial realities of keeping faith with the original intentions of the author are far further reaching than the implication on any given moviegoer’s preferences. Throughout the globe, there are many millions of Christian people who, in partnership with Netflix, will form a catalytic coalition capable of propelling the work and its influence to stellar box office performance.
The converse is also true. There have been numerous films that have suffered lack-luster box office performance because of a lack of reverence to the source material and/or a misunderstanding/misrepresentation of the underlying deeply held cultural principles. Those in touch with the broad Christian community, who subscribe to their social media and hear a sermon from the pulpit most Sundays, will understand that these films did poorly largely due to negative promotion among this very large portion of the population. It is worth noting that production houses would do well to partner with this large population of moviegoers when appropriate.
The default position of the world’s Christian community is that they want this material, and importantly, its underlying themes, to reach as many human beings as possible, and therefore they want the Netflix effort to succeed. They will be gasoline to the fire of the movie’s success. But, if these underlying themes are diminished, ignored or even sabotaged, the Christian community will vocally distance themselves from the project and even “cancel” the film.
While there are only two absolutely critical components of Christianity (who Christ is and what he did), like-wise with Narnia, the nature and mission of Aslan is critical. Any studio, writer, musician or artist who tampers with the nature and mission of Aslan, must expect the some negative feedback.
For reference, the general themes of the Narnia series were actually spelled out by Lewis himself in 1961.
As transcribed by Walter Hooper:
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