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I found one more letter in that file, where Jack Warner said, "As much as I love this project, we're going to cancel it because Warner Brother has decided we're not going to make any more war movies. We've made enough." And that was it. So the film was never done.

Hard to believe this story just sat on a shelf all those years?

Wales: Yeah. But that's one of the things I brought up with Phil Anschutz when I met with him in 1999. He had read Sea of Glory, and said he'd be interested in making it into a movie. We hope to do that one next.

What other films do you want to make?

Wales: I'd like to do a sequel to Chariots of Fire, called With Wings As Eagles, that follows Eric Liddell as a missionary to China. And I'd like to do The Great Divorce, based on the book by C. S. Lewis.

Who has the rights to do The Great Divorce?

Wales: The Episcopal Radio and TV Foundation [now the Episcopal Media Center], which did the original animated version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for PBS [in 1979]. They came to me and said they had procured the rights to The Great Divorce, and they were considering me to be the producer. I was just thrilled.

Why do you want to make this into a film?

Wales: I love the world of Lewis to start with, and there's a very good pre-awareness because of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—and more Narnia movies to come.

The Great Divorce is not about any marriage problem. It's about the alienation of man with God. It's that huge schism. It's a classic story about heaven and hell—actually, heaven or hell, and the allegory and juxtaposition of those phrases. I'm a big fan of stories about making choices, and this is one of those stories. It's about making the choices as to where you are, and where you're going.

Robin Williams in 'What Dreams May Come'

And I began to think about the story's bus trip, the George MacDonald character, the Lewis character, and the others, and we can things with this in CGI that you just couldn't do a while back. Remember Robin Williams in What Dreams May Come? There's a lot of that type of imagery in there—and that was all done with artwork because there really wasn't CGI stuff to do that with. Now you do that all with CGI.

But this is all pre-, pre-, pre-production talk for now.

So, you've got four films in mind—the Newton follow-up, Sea of Glory, The Great Divorce, and the Chariots sequel. What are the chances you'll see all four of these films come to fruition?

Wales: I'm determined to see them get done. One of the ways is to share the load; you try to find collaboration, for persons to keep them going down parallel tracks so that while you're finishing one, you're preparing the next one.

Filmmakers of Faith, an occasional feature at Christianity Today Movies, highlights directors who adhere to the Christian faith—sometimes strongly, sometimes loosely, and sometimes somewhere in between. This series will include everyone from biblically-minded evangelicals to directors who may only have a "church background" and perhaps a lapsed faith … but their films are clearly informed by their spiritual history.

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