The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe is the most popular Narnia book because everyone loves lions and witches.

No wardrobes, though. Wardrobes can eff off. However, despite The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe’s success, the other Narnia books are as popular as diarrhoea in a wetsuit. And that’s why Disney decided not to make the third Narnia movie, The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader.

But relax – Twentieth Century Fox has stepped in to produce The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader. You’ll see your boring film about irritating children titting about on a boat with a Jesus-lion after all!

If you ever wanted to see a classic example of short-term thinking gone wrong, you don’t need to look any further than Disney and Walden Media’s decision to adapt all of CS Lewis‘ Chronicles Of Narnia books into movies.

Sure, the first one’s OK. There’s a scary witch in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, and Santa Claus, and a paedo-goat. You know, for the kids. And Prince Caspian’s decent enough as well – true, it hasn’t got as much zip as the first book, but at least there’s a sexy prince in it.

But then the third Narnia book is about some people on a boat, the fourth Narnia book is about a chair, the fifth Narnia book hasn’t got any of the characters from the other books in it and is about a talking horse, the sixth Narnia book is basically the first bit of the Bible but with a talking lion in it and the seventh Narnia book is a lot of racist nonsense where a woman essentially gets thrown out of heaven for having a fanny. And worst of all? No bloody wardrobes.

So that, added to the fact that last year’s movie version of Prince Caspian was basically a Kwiksave Lord Of The Rings that nobody really wanted to see, meant that Disney last year decided not to produce The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, citing ‘budgetary considerations and other logistics’ – clearly code for ‘we don’t want to keep making increasingly unpopular Jesus movies about big-toothed children who everyone secretly wants to drown’.

But just as it looked like the Narnia franchise was done for, Twentieth Century Fox has stepped in to save the day, as the Los Angeles Times reports:

Twentieth Century Fox has agreed to co-finance the third movie in the “Chronicles of Narnia” series, pending approval of the final script and shooting budget. If all goes as planned, Fox and Walden Media, which controls the movie rights to C.S. Lewis’ classic children’s books, hope to be begin production on “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” by late summer so it will be ready for holiday 2010 release.

Good! That’s more like it – 20th Century Fox gets a say over the script. Fox knows what makes a movie tick, so hopefully it’ll get right down to it and turn The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader into a legitimately popular movie. And that means less of the Jesus crap. And it’s set on a spaceship, not a boat. And Aslan is a robot that can shoot lasers out of his eyes. And there’s a funny dog in it. Gold.

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