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In late 2005, Douglas Gresham was nervously looking forward to the theatrical release of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the film adaptation of the first book in the beloved Chronicles of Narnia.

Gresham had a dual interest in the film's success. Not only was he one of the movie's producers, but he's also the stepson of the books' author—C. S. Lewis.

Douglas Gresham

Gresham needn't have worried. LWW would go on to be a box office smash, earning $745 million at the box office worldwide—a figure that has soared well past $1 billion with DVD sales.

Now he looks forward to the May 16 release of Prince Caspian, the second film in the series, in which the four Pevensie children—Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy—return to Narnia and find quite a different place than they'd left behind. They encounter a helpful dwarf, a corrupt king, and a young prince looking to take his rightful place on the throne—and to restore order, justice, truth, goodness and joy to the magical land.

We recently chatted with Gresham, 62, who had just seen a rough cut of the film—which he says might be better than LWW, even though it's adapted from what Gresham calls a "poorer" book. Gresham spoke to us by phone from his home in Malta.

What has kept you busy since The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe?

Douglas Gresham: We started thinking about Prince Caspian the day of the premiere of Lion/Witch. We had a short respite, and then really got into Prince Caspian. And we're already in preproduction on Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

I understand you recently saw a rough cut of Caspian. Your thoughts?

Gresham: It's a fabulous film. I'm very, very pleased. It's a film that portrays probably even more strongly than the book the essential message of Prince Caspian, which is a return to truth and faith and honor and justice after a millennium of corruption in Narnia. I almost hate to say it, but I think it's a better movie than The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Prince Caspian started with a poorer story than Lion/Witch, but has worked out probably to be a better movie.

Why do you think Caspian is a poorer story?

Gresham: The book doesn't have the power of the story The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, which is based on the greatest story ever told. You can't really top that. Prince Caspian, when you look at it from a filmmaker's viewpoint, is a story basically about a long walk in the woods with a battle at the end. As a movie that doesn't really work.

We had some difficulty figuring out how to make Caspian work as a film. In the book, the children arrive in Narnia, and they all sit down around the campfire and Trumpkin tells them the story of Prince Caspian—which means that the four Pevensie children vanish for half of the book. If you made it into a movie that way, your protagonists wouldn't be in half of the film. And that just doesn't work as a movie.

But Trumpkin's story makes for a thrilling flashback. Are you saying you didn't want to leave the Pevensie children while telling Caspian's backstory?

Gresham: The problem would be that you would have two entirely separate storylines going on, in separate timescales. You'd wind up with half a movie that's Prince Caspian's story, and all of a sudden you've got the Pevensie kids crashing back into the film. We had to find some way of integrating the Pevensies and Caspian together in a way that works for the story, and I think our scriptwriters did a wonderful job managing to do that.

Caspian (center) and the Pevensie kids in Narnia

So do they actually meet up with Caspian earlier in the movie than in the book?

I'm not going to give too much away at this stage.

I understand. But would it be accurate to say …

Gresham: I tell you what to do. Go see the movie when it comes out. Take all your friends and take your friends' friends. Take your enemies as well, because you're supposed to love your enemies. Take your enemies' friends. And then you can tell me if you think we've done a good job with it.

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