• BC Christian News • OCTOBER ISSUE 1998 • VOL. 18 #10 • Formerly "Christian Info News" •

Tolkien and Lewis works coming to screen?
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THE INKLINGS may be coming soon to a theatre near you. Films based on the novels of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are currently in development, and may begin hitting multiplexes as early as Christmas 2000.

New Line Cinemas recently announ-ced that it would spend $130 million to produce a series of live-action films based on Tolkien's trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson, whose last film was the Michael J. Fox ghost story The Frighteners, plans to start shooting the three films back-to-back next year in his native New Zealand.

The executive producer on all three films will be Saul Zaentz, the Oscar-winning producer of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus and The English Patient. Zaentz previously produced an animated film based on the first half of the trilogy and directed by Ralph Bakshi in 1978.

Meanwhile, it looks like Paramount's film adaptation of Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe may have finally been pulled out of limbo.

Douglas Gresham confirms that a new team of writers is developing a script based on his stepfather's classic children's tale, and family-movie veteran Rob Minkoff -- director of The Lion King and the upcoming Stuart Little -- is attached to direct the project, should it get the green light any time soon.

Gresham also confirms that British filmmaker Henry Seggerman has bought the rights to produce a film adaptation of Lewis's science fiction novel Out of the Silent Planet and is now working on the second draft of the screenplay. -- Peter T. Chattaway