The Hollywood Reporter announced tonight that Disney has decided not to be involved with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third installment in The Chronicles of Narnia. Walden Media is now looking for another studio to co-finance and distribute the film — possibly Fox, which formed a sort of partnership with Walden a couple years ago but shut it down in all but name two months ago. Whatever happens, it looks like we will never get to see a boxed set with all seven Narnia movies, even if the rest of C.S. Lewis’s fantasy series does get filmed in the end. In cases like this, when a franchise is spread out among multiple studios, the studios tend not to collaborate on the home-video release.
DEC 27 UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times says Walden and Disney could not agree on a release date, and there were “creative differences” between them as well, in addition to the budgetary and logistical concerns that have already been reported.
DEC 28 UPDATE: Jim Hill notes that another factor which prompted Disney to let go of the Narnia franchise was the DVD sales for Prince Caspian, which were a lot, lot slower than they were for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005).
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