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The Chronicles of Narnia is one of the most celebrated fantasy series in the world of literature. For a time, it looked like that success would translate to film. The first film, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe grossed $745 million at the box office, indicating a strong start for the franchise. However, the series was cancelled after the third film, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Although the films were still strong box office performers, they were expensive to produce, with each installment making less than the previous one.

Ben Barnes, who played Prince Caspian in the series, speculates that Disney and Fox weren’t able to maintain fan enthusiasm in a crowded marketplace.

“Disney actually only made the first two, and the rest to Fox, who made The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” Barnes says during a panel at Tampa Bay Comic Convention. “It’s interesting, I was talking about this in relation to Shadow and Bone, I think when you have things on such a massive scale, like Narnia or Shadow and Bone, and any of those types of things, the drop off of people’s enthusiasm for it, because there’s so many things being made between the first film and a sequel, or even a second and third season of something.”

“If you lose a third of the people watching it because they got excited about a new thing that came out, then it’s difficult for them. It’s sadly and boringly financial. It's expensive to make stuff like that if they think not enough people are going to be treated by it. I think those three books are the books people know, and so after that you’re in kind of unknown territory in terms of are people going to watch a movie of The Silver Chair. I don’t know. It doesn’t have the same characters in it anymore, so it’s kind of a meandering series in that way. So, I think [20^th Century Fox] probably just wanted to just make that one. I don’t know, I’m not really qualified to answer that.”

A rebooted film series is currently being developed by Netflix. The first installment is expected to be released in November 2026.

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