Oh dear lord, no.

One of my e-pals summed up his response to the film version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with the following seven words: “New director for the next installment, please.”

Alas, Variety reports that my friend’s wish has been thwarted, and writer-director Andrew Adamson will indeed put his dubious stamp on Prince Caspian, due for a Christmas 2007 release.

My favorite part of the Variety story is the paragraph that begins: “While it remains to be seen whether or not the White Witch is brought back (she was convincingly killed in the original)…” I dearly hope this is just the reporter’s ignorance shining through, and not a sign that Walden and Disney plan to tweak C.S. Lewis’s story by bringing back one of the first film’s better assets.

One wonders if the Narnia movies will follow a trajectory similar to that of the Harry Potter movies, with a mediocre director spending two films putting the machinery together so that other, more talented directors can do something useful with it later on.