The Chronicles of Narnia DVD Thread

[chapnearwdw]

2099net and pixarfan: thanks for that, now I'll just play the waiting game until it's released...

[dvdjunkie]

It appears that April 4th is the go date for release of "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe". All the video stores, Blockbuster, Hollywood, and the like have posters in the windows that say April 4th, and it is coming with two different covers - one for the single-disc version and one for the two-disc version. Look for a sale price at Best Buy or Ultimate Electronics on the two-disc version.

[Disneykid]

NarniaWeb has posted some specs, though I don't think it's complete, yet:

Disc One:
* Audio Commentary with Director Andrew Adamson and the Technical Crew
* Audio Commentary with Director Andrew Adamson and the Pevensies
* Pop-Up Fact Track (created in conjunction with the C.S. Lewis Estate)

Disc Two:

Creating Narnia

* Bloopers of Narnia (4:22)

* Fun Facts of Narnia

* The Children's Magical Journey - making of the film with the film's young stars (26:23)

* Anatomy of a Scene: The Melting River (22:00)

* Chronicles of a Director - Andrew Adamson's personal film diary (37:44)

* Cinematic Storytellers - Personal film diaries from key production members (54:51)
-- Don McAlpine (8:01)
-- Isis Mussendon (7:42)
-- Sim Evan-Jones (6:46)
-- Harry Gregson (6:23)
-- Mark Johnson (5:50)
-- Howard Berger (5:24)
-- Richard Taylor (6:33)
-- Roger Ford (8:08)

Creatures, Lands, and Legends

* Creating Creatures - learn how many of the film's amamzing creatures came to life
-- Aslan
-- The White Witch
-- Tumnus
-- Ginarrbrik
-- Beavers
-- Wolves
-- Centaurs
-- Minotaurs
-- Ankle-Slicers
-- Satyrs
-- Goblins

* Creatures of the World - more on Narnia's fantastic creature creations

* From One Man's Mind - A look at author C.S. Lewis

* Explore Narnia - A 3-dimensional journey throughout the lands

* Legends In Time - A timeline of Narnia


This all sounds excellent. The commentary with the Pevensie kids has me really excited, and it's not every day you see a featurette on the creation of the DVD you're watching. As long as each featurette is lengthy and detailed, this could be the best Disney DVD of the year. The only room for improvement would be to add galleries (which is possible considering Pirates of the Caribbean had them), deleted scenes (very likely to be there), and trailers (I'm not holding my breath on this).

[chapnearwdw]

thanx 4 da nfo dudes!!!!

[PixarFan]

Awesome! Thanks for posting that. I am so excited for this DVD!

By the way, narniaweb has an update saying Disney announced that disc two would include "10 hours of bonus features." Heh, well, they said that for Pirates of the Caribbean, too, and we didn't get quite that much.

Also, they've got a link to this website that gives more details on the discs bonus features.

[Disneykid]

Now we know why the Collector's Edition retails for 35 bucks. It'll come with a booklet and (I assume if I'm reading the piece right) a portfolio of concept art. So this is essentially like a Platinum gift set, only you'll have to buy the gift set to get the second disc of supplements. Speaking of which...10 hours?! Holy frick...I don't think I've ever seen 10 hours' worth of supplements on a single disc before. Normally, I'd just assume they're counting the commentaries (which would still be an impressive 5.5 hours' worth of video features), but they go outright and say 10 hours on disc two. Not even the Lord of the Rings DVDs have that much each. Those each contain six hours spread across two discs. So either this is a typo, or a very impressive breakthrough in DVD technology. Bring it on!

Oh, and here are some descriptions of the bonus features from About.com:

Cinematic Storytellers: Personal video diaries kept by the film’s key production members. The segment previewed features the film’s editor in his house discussing a personal photos of his father that was used in production as the photo Edmund recovers while his house is being bombed.

The Children's Magical Journey: A “making of” feature focusing on the young actors’ experiences, many of them first timers, on a movie set. The segment previewed shows a blindfolded Georgie Henley discovering the sets of Narnia for the first time, and presents how those reactions ended up in the film.

Anatomy of a Scene: Details the creation of the melting river scene. See the water tank enclosed in a blue screen as the kids hold onto their prop ice raft while a giant vat of water empties onto them. Also see how the miniatures and practical sets came together to create the sequence.

Chronicles of a Director: A feature detailing Andrew Adamson’s commitment to the project. It promises to showcase some of the off screen details he included in the Narnia sets just to create atmosphere. The segment previewed shows interviews of Adamson explaining his personal connection to the C.S. Lewis books.

Meet the Creatures of Narnia: Explore the creatures of Narnia with a full menu of selections: The White Witch, Aslan, Tumnus, Wolves, Centaurs, Minotaurs, Ankle-Slicers, Ginarrbrik, Beavers, Satyrs and Goblins. There are two parallel creature menus, switchable by clicking on the wardrobe icon. The first wave focuses on the movie creatures with actors and filmmakers discussing, the second wave offers more of a historical biography of the creatures.

Mapquest: Narnia: A three dimensional map lets you explore the lands of Narnia including such key locations as the White Witch’s Castle, the Battlefield, Cair Paravel and the Stone Table. A tour guide voices the locations with a mix of artwork and clips of the film and its production.

DVD Production: Peter Jackson may do this all the time, but Narnia was the first time Disney had a DVD production office on the set of the production. The DVD you’ll see is the result of the DVD team working hand in hand with the Narnia team throughout production of the film.

Production Footage: Through various shots of the production, you can see the kids riding on an automated Aslan like a theme park ride, and various extras standing around with green stockings on their arms and legs, for fantastic appendages to be added later.

[yankees]

Are there going to be deleted scenes on the two disc?

[dvdjunkie]

If you are a "Pirates of the Caribbean" fan, then go looking for the hidden easter eggs on the extras DVD. When you find all those you will have those extra hours of missing footage you want to see.

I will bet that "Narnia" will have a bunch of hidden easter eggs. When it is released, just go to DVDEasterEggs.com and you will be helped to find those hidden treasures.

I can tell you that one of the 'hidden' easter eggs on "Pirates" is the screen test for Johnny Depp.

[Little Mermaid]

Cool! Thanks for the tip!

[BrandonH]

I am very excited about the list of bonus features for the two-disc set. While I do not believe that there are 10 hours of bonus features on disc 2, I could believe that there are 10 hours between the two discs.

[ichabod]

Some bonus features passed by the BBFC

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA - THE LION, THE WITCH, & THE WARDROBE - DVD BONUS COMPILATION Video
Feature
Run Time 54m 51s
Widescreen, DVD additional material
00:08:01:16 (CINEMATIC STORYTELLERS - DON MCALPINE)
00:07:42:02 (CINEMATIC STORYTELLERS - ISIS MUSSENDON)
00:06:46:02 (CINEMATIC STORYTELLERS - SIM EVAN-JONES)
00:06:23:12 (CINEMATIC STORYTELLERS - HARRY GREGSON)
00:05:50:20 (CINEMATIC STORYTELLERS - MARK JOHNSON)
00:05:24:14 (CINEMATIC STORYTELLERS - HOWARD BERGER)
00:06:33:16 (CINEMATIC STORYTELLERS - RICHARD TAYLOR)
00:08:08:12 (CINEMATIC STORYTELLERS - ROGER FORD

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA THE LION, THE WITCH, & THE WARDROBE - DVD EXTRA BONUS COMPILATION Video
Feature
Run Time 69m 52s
00:37:44:05 CHRONICLES OF A DIRECTOR
00:01:21:14 TURKISH DELIGHT
00:26:23:09 THER CHILDRENS MAGICAL JOURNEY
00:04:22:21 BLOOPERS OF NARNIA

[PixarFan]

Wow, those look great! A 37 minute documentary, a 26 minute documentary, and over 50 minutes of cinematic storytellers! And judging from the bonus features mentioned above, there's still a lot we haven't seen! I wonder what "Turkish Delight" is all about? And I hope the blooper reel is better than a most of the blooper reels I've seen with movies lately.

This looks very cool!

[Disneykid]

That all sounds excellent! We have over two hours' worth of supplements, and that's not even including these:

* Fun Facts of Narnia
* Anatomy of a Scene: The Melting River
* Creating Creatures - learn how many of the film’s amazing creatures came to life
* Creatures of the World - more on Narnia’s fantastic creature creations
* From One Man’s Mind - A look at author C.S. Lewis
* Explore Narnia - A 3-dimensional journey throughout the lands
* Legends In Time - A timeline of Narnia

While I think the 10 hours thing was probably including the commentaries, it still looks like we'll have an excellent four hours or so of content. This could very well be the most comprehensive DVD for a live-action Disney film ever. Just give us deleted/extended scenes, galleries, and trailers, and it'll be perfect.

[MadonnasManOne]

It looks like members of EyeCraveDVD.com were invited to view a presentation on The Chronicles Of Narnia and Chicken Little DVD's. I'll post the information concerning The Chronicles Of Narnia

From EyeCraveDVD.com:

The Disney DVD producers became involved with Narnia in Pre-Production and had an onsite office. They had access to everything, but the bathroom (as quoted by Andrew Adamson).

The main menu for the Narnia DVD is pretty nice looking and is functional giving you what you need right off the bat. It consists of a sweeping helicopter shot of snow covered mountains and ice caps, with the movie options available below. The video used on the menu was shot while they were making the movie with real time footage by the DVD crew, while the main film crew shot their scenes.

One thing that the folks from Buena Vista mentioned was that Andrew Adamson chose his crew by how passionate they were about the film.

The bonus features disc has two ways to navigate through the bonus materials - Creating Narnia (behind the scenes/making-of's) and Creatures, Lands and Legends (the mythology behind Narnia).

The coolest feature that we were privy to previewing was Anatomy of a Scene: The Melting River. We were only shown about 4-minutes of the roughly 22-minute featurette, but it was pretty intense with the main cast of children holding on to a chunk of ice in a green chromakey water tank as they braced to be nailed by gallons of falling water for the melting waterfall scene.

On the making-of side of the bonus materials, the menu looks at 11 creature/characters in a typical behind the scenes, making of way. But, if you go down to the little wardrobe cabinet at the bottom of the screen and select it, you will be presented a gothic take on the same menu, but on a new angle. Now when you select the same character, you will learn about their mythology itself, rather then how they were made for the movie. Very clever and it fits well with the movie - through the wardrobe.

The Explore Narnia feature is a 3-dimensional journey through the world of Narnia. When you select an area you get all kinds of information for your selection in form of a 3-D map of Narnia. Think of the map of Middle Earth from LOTR as an example, but when you select and area you get info related to it.

As mentioned on the net for a while, we also found out that the 2-disc edition will have a booklet and some artwork included with it and that the film will be available in only widescreen for both versions.

The Narnia presentation exposed us to only 45 minutes of the hours worth of available supplemental material. It looks like quite the set.

www.EyeCraveDVD.com

http://www.eyecravedvd.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1293

[MadonnasManOne]

Wow, looking at the package contents and art (Thanks, Luke), the 2-Disc set is really beautiful! I can't wait to pick this up!

[ichabod]

For those of you who will no doubt get confused about where the front page is

here's the pic

http://www.ultimatedisney.com/coverart.html#apr

Well all i can say is that I hope we get this in the UK too, we'd better!

[Disneykid]

That set looks freaking amazing. I'm so happy that Disney has given what has become my favorite live-action film of theirs the class-A royal treatment. I only hope they continue this with the other Narnia films. If they don't, I'm at least happy that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe will be the one to get the best treatment since that's my favorite book in the series and will probably be my favorite of the films, as well.

[PixarFan]

Wow, this keeps getting better! We now have nearly 2 and a half hours of material on the second disc, and that's still not including both of the "creatures" features, the C.S. Lewis documentary, Fun Facts of Narnia, the Narnia timeline, the 3D map, and any easter eggs or additional features we don't yet know about! And the packaging of the set looks even more amazing than I hoped it would!

[lord-of-sith]

Well, hope the 2-disc DVD is the same packaging width as the 1-disc, so it can match up with the rest of the DVDs. But I'm excited to see all of those special features on the DVD. Well... I'm off to find those Pirates easter eggs.

[PatrickvD]

Looks like a pretty cool set. And jampacked too. I loved this film. I was really surprised by how good it was.