'NEVER WORK WITH animals or children.' Unless they're working with the likes of Dakota Fanning or Haley Joel Osment, most filmmakers who have worked with either would probably say that old adage is true.
Director Andrew Adamson considers himself one of the lucky ones. Despite the fact that he cast four relatively inexperienced unknowns in his new film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and had to deal with 23 species of creatures, he has lived to tell the tale.
'But then my animals were computer-generated and much easier to control, although the children weren't,' says Adamson, who also directed the adventures of a green ogre called Shrek. 'Actually, that was one of the best parts of making the movie. [The children] are so open, so wanting to please. Maybe I was fortunate I found these four. They're great kids. They formed a family and let me be a part of that family.'
The story is an adaptation of the C.S. Lewis novel of the same name and is part of the seven-book Chronicles of Narnia series written in the 1950s.
The children - William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Skandar Keynes and Georgie Henley - play, respectively, the Pevensie siblings Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, who discover the magical world of Narnia through the back of a wardrobe that plunges them into the adventure of a lifetime.
They meet magical creatures and the White Witch (chillingly played by Tilda Swinton), who casts a spell freezing the land. The children's arrival coincides with the return of Aslan the lion (voiced by Liam Neeson), which fulfils a prophecy that threatens the reign of the White Witch.
