Rock Music in Gerwig's Narnia and Other Film News

0:05 Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and I'm joined by my podcast partner, Jacob Renecker, who is sitting over the other side of the... The Atlantic from me. And we are today going to be discussing like a roundup of the latest film and TV news in the world of fantasy, but majoring mostly on the Narnia, the magician's nephew, Greta Gerwig. So Jacob, welcome.

0:45 Thanks. Good to be here, Julia. So we have both run out and got ourselves a copy of the Empire magazine article with Greta Gerwig and from the set. And we both have just been discussing how we couldn't find a physical copy. Shows you how much the sort of magazine world has changed since... I suppose last time I bought copies for the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit films. But we both have managed to secure digital copies. And it really was a very interesting from the set explanation of what's going on.

1:27 So, Jacob, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you gleaned? Yeah, there was a lot. It was really the first sentence of it is Gerwig asking, you know, where are the vibes? So in terms of vibes or ambiance, theming, there's a lot in the article about the feeling that she's going for with this particular film. And I think, and it's, so like the headliner is kind of rock opera vibes or something that's like, so, and by that, I think she means by the pictures and the way that they're describing it, what we've seen is, you know, bright, bright colors, something that is, I think, I don't want to say like, upbeat, up-tempo, something that has a lot of energy to it, kind of maybe unbridled energy and enthusiasm to it.

2:25 So, yes, there was a lot of mention of rock music, music. in there, but it's also, which it looks like will be woven in there, but also it's more of kind of like the essence of this, this coming out of, and she's setting it kind of contextually, with World War II, the people that, like David Bowie, who are growing up to become these kind of iconic pop music authors, they're growing up in World War II, the rubble of World War II, is how they describe it in the articles. So what she's doing, and this is where the director's author, she is rewriting a take on The Magician's Nephew.

3:12 She's decided to set it in 1955, which is the year it was published, not the year it is set. And she is coming at it with the idea that for her as an individual, Her windows of perception, her doorway into imagination was through rock musicians, the Paul McCartneys, the David Bowies and Robert Plants, that kind of thing. But she then thought about their childhoods. These were children who were either born just after or some during, but a lot just after the Second World War in a bombed out landscape.

3:53 And their escape from that was through the rock music coming in initially from the States mainly. And then they sort of had this explosion of creativity, which was the swinging sixties and the Dazzling 70s. I'm not sure what we call that. And so she thought, right, this is the journey. So we've got purposely make our world bleak and bombed out. And they've had to rebuild the sets because it's not like that anymore. Yeah. You know, so they've gone for that. And then the world of Narnia and Chan, because we mustn't forget Chan, is the contrast, the place you escape to.

4:37 uh so one of my favorite bits in the article is she refers to the wood between the world as being based on the london underground map it's an iconic design feature which anybody from the uk and possibly a lot of people globally knows the idea that you can pop up in regent's park or you can pop up in Victoria, just by going, connecting. So I love that idea. That's a really, I thought, oh yeah, that's really fun. So she's not saying... She's admitting to this or enjoying the idea of this lair, which will annoy like crazy the ones who want – because we've never seen a magician's nephew, so we've not seen the late Victorian period from the book with Queen Jadis riding a chariot like some kind of Babylonian queen, which is what Lewis had in mind.

5:39 She's moving it to this context. And just to bring into the design idea, Chan is like a Barbarella 60s... It's like a broken pinball machine. Yeah. So it's like flashing lights and really kind of garish colors. Pulp fiction. It's that stuff. So... So it feels like one of those films made from the era, the kind of Flash Gordon type special effects. So that's what was outlaid in, well, both in the sort of rumours coming in advance, but also very clearly in this article, which I thought was well worth a read out there if you want to sort of dig into the details.

6:25 So thinking of all of that, yeah. What is your response, Jacob, to this? Does this work? Do you think it's going to work? Yeah. So... I think so. What impressed me was Greta finding emotional touch points for her own life and kind of like translating those, finding points of resonance. Like, okay, what was, for me, what opened up my imagination and made life seem like wildly full of possibilities for her? Like you mentioned, it was this rock music. And she said, it saved my life, whatever that means. So it was very important to her.

7:05 It's a bit hyperbolic, I think. But, you know. Right. Right. So she's finding that point of resonance and then finding something in the story of Magician's Nephew, and she's finding a way to marry those two. So I think anything that's written out of a place of emotional truth for the author is going to come across as being more resonant for the audience. Because if you don't care about the material and you're just kind of doing a paint-by-numbers technique, strict adaptation if you don't have a personal investment in it then i think it's easier to see those stories films shows when people don't really care as much um she even mentioned with what something was funny with the the charn her design there she said it was um in the article inspired by a childhood trip to las vegas which is bright and shiny you know on the on the outside so she got lost and ended up in like the back alleyway beyond the the strip which is like the curated, dazzling lights, clean, everything is meant to grab your attention.

8:05 And then she ended up going behind the buildings accidentally and seeing this like broken down things. And so seeing on the other side of this like glittering, glamorous world, there was something that showed it's like emptiness inside. And that for her wasn't like an emotional experience as a child that she's bringing to her. how she's dealing with charn itself. So the points of emotional resonance, like that's really inspiring to me for how the story can turn out and unfold. She clearly has a unified vision for what this world is and finding points of personal connection emotionally. I think that's very promising for me. Yeah, so the slightly odd thing, I'm just thinking about it.

8:46 I mean, I've had fun thinking about what 70s rock songs would I use as my soundtrack. She's presumably going to cherry pick her way through these. So obviously, is this a real thing? Is this just fantasy? You know, the Bohemian Rhapsody. It's going to be in there, surely. Things like that. So I can have fun like she has making my playlist. The odd thing about it for me is, well, there's quite a few odd things about it. I'm excited by the vision. And if someone's going to do this, let's jump straight in and see if it stands. You know, if it works as a film, it works. She doesn't have to apologize. Right.

9:26 But it's not her generation's experience. It's actually the experience of my parents' generation. So the Paul McCartneys of this world are actually in their 80s. And she's also not British. So she's leaning into something which is very specific to a sort of British memory of the time, the Festival of Britain, and all sorts of other points of reference, which I guess she's probably clever enough to know about and informed herself about. But it'd be interesting to see... how this works because her saying, oh, Paul McCartney, David Bowie saved my life, that stuff seems, she's a bit young.

10:10 So she must have come across these people later in her own, you know, how old is she? She's not my age, she's younger than me. I think she's in her 40s, yeah, must be like early 40s. She was that kid in school who was listening to stuff from almost So that's really odd. But fine, because the other thing to remember, she is going to carry, if she's going to carry on doing Narnia film, she needs somewhere to go. So she can't, she has to set it far enough back so that the Professor Diggory grows up and becomes, you know, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, if she does that, is contemporary, which would be fun to see what she does, because if you do the math, it works out.

10:55 Yeah. Yeah, interesting. I think one of the things, so obviously looking at the book, so she has mentioned in that article that the whole spread of the series is from creation to the end of the world. So she's aware of the arc. There was no mention of the sort of spiritual message there. Right. So that's, yeah, which is interesting. And I think this, so this is interesting. So she said, yeah, when she's describing her vision for the series, she's describing it to Netflix, the head of film at Netflix at the time that she was talking with it. It's about the creation and destruction of an entire universe.

11:38 And so seeing it set in the rubble of World War II, its creation is... in the like seedbed of destruction, right? So it's cyclical. So there's hope. So she's talking about this like locating hope, which I think is interesting. But yeah, regarding this, like the spiritual lack of like spiritual core, what I was thinking, I was actually thinking about, C.S. Lewis, his essay, Sometimes Ferry Stories May Say Best What's to Be Said. And I think here's a quote that I think is worth reading in full. So this is Lewis talking about his some of what he's doing in writing, reimagining ideas that are rooted in his religious worldview in fantasy or the fairytale kind of mode of communication.

12:26 So he says, I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. Kids never want to do what they're told to, right? An obligation to feel can freeze feelings, and reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices, almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained glass and Sunday school associations. One could make them for the first time appear in their real potency.

13:07 Could one thus not the steel past those watchful dragons? I thought one could. So what I see, so interestingly, I think that she's, what she can do here is take Narnia out of a, you know, maybe primarily through, a particular religious lens or spiritual lens. And in a landscape where, especially like Lewis was deeply Christian, where in an age where Christianity has become so politicized on both ends of the spectrum and polarized, that this is perhaps a way to kind of steal past our own kind of modern watchful dragons for the ideas or knee-jerk reactions we have to ideas of spirituality, which like, again, like, so like the world as a whole, and people are on different sides of the fence on different issues.

13:55 And the people who are even like people who are religious versus non-religious, this, this perhaps is a way to kind of like cut through and say is here's, here's this story. And maybe this is giving people a chance to experience the core their kind of like natural defenses against a story like this. So in some ways that actually seemed kind of Lewisian in its approach to, which is kind of ironic, right? Like what C.S. Lewis was trying to do with kind of his Christian story or story of morality and ethics was, she almost seems to be doing something similar with his story, which has achieved a sense of reverence and on.

14:37 Perhaps people are looking at it too rigidly in some ways or feel like they know exactly how it is and become solidified. And so C.S. Lewis is an author. I feel like he was a very generous reader, not just as an author, but as a reader. So in the notes that he's writing and books, he wants to take the book as it was written, try to understand it, give it the benefit of the doubt. And so I feel like Lewis would probably be... Pickled by, whereas I think Tolkien would have, I feel they would have very different reactions to interpretations of their work. I feel like Lewis might... Just on the point of how to treat Lewis's... book, I think one of Tolkien's problems was there was too much more obvious messaging in it because his own policy was to strip away, strip out the obvious religious messaging in order to have Christianity, in his case, more present.

15:31 And I'm actually quite relieved that she's not actually talking about the sort of spiritual messaging of it for similar reasons to you in that you can't So either you offend a lot of sort of, you know, Sunday school teacher type people. Right. Or you put off a global audience who don't want to go and see a Christian film. So just don't talk about it. Let the material be the story and just get on with it. So I think that's. That's a wise choice. Yeah. Because, you know, it's not a plot spoiler now, is it?

16:12 But it reruns the Garden of Eden, a version of the Garden of Eden. So it's there and it's about resisting temptation. And because Lewis had a sort of preoccupation with can you avoid a fall? And in the way the fall happens in Narnia, but it's by accident. It's bringing Jadis into Narnia by mistake. So that's what produces evil there in a way. It's not so much the Apple moment, though, of course, that's running a Garden of Eden parallel very clearly.

16:53 So, no, I'm interested. I think it would be fun to see. And it leaves space, just to sort of put it, you know, the book remains. The book has a Victorian atmosphere and feel. It leaves space for that to still exist in its own world, leaves space for other people to tackle it again in the future. might be quite a shot of energy. Yeah, exactly. Which is what I think is interesting and I think could help. Again, people usually are familiar with Magicians and the Narnia books because their parents read it to them.

17:34 They have these experiences or they've even seen the films. The films are... how many, 20 plus years old at this point. And so they might've seen those films and they have a very particular feeling. And those feelings, so the original, or not the original, because there were other adaptations of Narnia before that, but the most recently Disney, Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, that one was produced after the success of the beginning of the Lord of the Rings film. So it very much has that same kind of like subdued, kind of high fantasy, medieval, uh, tone and then filmed with like a sort of like medieval reverence. Right. Um, in, in a sense. And so it's very similar there.

18:15 And so seeing, and, and they're, they're different, like Lewis, not that Tolkien didn't have joy in his work. He clearly has fun with the songs and moments, but there is like, uh, Tolkien, in his mind, the long defeat is something that's always kind of like looming in the background. And so like, these are moments of brightness, but this inevitable kind of decline is coming and what people can do in the light of that. And Lewis, to me, and reading the story is like, it seems more joyful in many ways. I don't know if that's the audience that he's particularly writing for there. And so the sense like the way that you could have trying to adapt to magician's nephew as if it were Lord of the Rings, I think that's a mistake because they're in different tones.

19:01 So we have these conversations about Lewis's world building, if you can call it that. He's kind of piecemeal, kind of bringing things together. Some might say that that's sloppy world building. Lewis, I think, was doing it joyfully in terms of bringing everything and inviting all of these different sources together and having fun with them, whereas Tolkien is more fastidious in making sure everything. Everything is connected just so, and every tree has a history and who planted it and when. So there are different approaches to world building. And I think Lewis's is more open, is more kind of like flexible in many ways. And so I think that this type of approach lends itself well.

19:42 Like you tried to do this to Lord of the Rings, I think is a mistake. I don't think you could do it as well. I would actually love to see that, to see what generates from that. But I think given Lewis's kind of playfulness and his ability to, again, play with ideas and put them into conversation with each other, that he does so well in so many different settings, in a fantasy, in a sci-fi setting, I think, yeah, I'm excited to see... how the whole thing shapes out here. I think it is a positive way, a completely legitimate way to approach the source material, and I'm excited to see how it actually turns out.

20:23 Yeah, I think there's a couple of, sort of looking at the cast, within this rock opera world, it's going to be quite tricky for David McKenna, who's playing Diggory, and Beatrice Campbell, who's playing Polly Plummer, Be cool in that world. You know, because they're young and they look like 1950s kids. They're very sweet looking. And one of the things about the Narnia stories is the children do become the heroes, right? So it does be interesting to see how they balance out this We Are All Rock Gods type feel with Emma Mackey as the White Witch and Meryl Streep as Aslan.

21:10 Interesting to see how they come through that to be, you know, if it should be their film. It should be their film, not the adults. Daniel Craig as Wicked Uncle Andrew, I think, is going to be a great film. she's very cleverly picked the one person still riding a horse-drawn vehicle in the 1950s. Well, maybe there were some... beer deliveries. The breweries use horses for longer. But Cobb and Holbrook Smith is playing, I think, Albert. Is that the name of the character?

21:50 The cabbie. Anyway, the cabbie from the story also gives a sort of bit of diversity as well, which is great to see that happening, which would have been harder to have put in, I suppose, in an early Victorian... a late Victorian piece because this is after the Windrush generation. So it all fits. Windrush, for American listeners, is the name for the larger amounts of immigration for work from the Caribbean coming into Britain. It was called the Windrush after the boat that brought lots of people across. So I think that all sounds good. And I'm actually having...

22:32 read the explanation in the Empire magazine, thank you, Empire, I actually feel, oh, okay. Maybe we're not heading for a complete car smash of a film and maybe this will work. I just think it's going to be holding such an explosive idea with these two little kids is going to be interesting. Can I ask you what you think of the lion in the room? Oh, Meryl. Well, in the article... Yes, what are your thoughts there on the explanation? In the article, it says she chose a voice because she wanted room for other voices. So I wonder if she does more films, if she actually recasts Aslan, doesn't have the same voice.

23:19 A bit like Doctor Who regenerating. Yeah, right, right. I have no idea. I would have to see the visual of Aslan with the voice coming out of it. The voice, yeah. Because who knows what they're going to do digitally to the voice. Yeah. Yeah. And so, again, when she says she wanted the tone or, again, to draw on her words at the beginning of the article, the vibe of Aslan that she was looking for, she said she wanted someone who was profound but not pretentious, who had gravitas but not morose self-seriousness, someone who could communicate depth and pathos as well as joy and delight. And so that language was very... G.K. Chesterton, in my mind, right?

24:01 This kind of like these paradoxes holding this like grandness, but also this like childlike, you know, like omniscience, but as well as this like childlike joy and exuberance that you want like both of those in as an and typical like so with Liam Neeson, great quality of voice. He's a very, you know, like subdued, sometimes angry, but they're there isn't like a sense of like sparkling joy, like lying underneath the surface. So that erupts occasionally, but you do see when Aslan in mind, which word are, when he's like, playing around with the girls. And so I think, so that to me was interesting. I kind of find a voice that wasn't just that you would think of a James Earl Jones, kind of a severe voice of your character who's kind of representing God.

24:46 But this is somebody who's like, has wonder, who has like, yes, gravitas, but also like joy and delight. And then, so that's really interesting to find again, like short circuiting, kind of stealing past our watchful dragons of what we think, a voice of, you know, cosmic significance could be. Is it a serious, is it a Sunday school, like you were saying, like type of voice, does it need to do that? Or is there room for different types of voices to express that idea of what kind of lies at the core? So that was interesting to me, again, like you were saying, like from the way Gret is describing it in the article. Because Aslan comes in quite late in the story, and he comes in singing.

25:29 But his singing is magical singing because it's creating a world. So it's realizing something which works on the page, actually having to make decisions how you realize that. on the screen is what she gets the big bucks for, I suppose. And when you think about Benedict Cumberbatch being a dragon, what they do is they put his voice through a lot of layers of sort of, I don't know, whatever their magic jiggery-pokery is going on in the background. Yeah. But it's still his performance with all this other element added in. I don't know what a lion sounds like. I guess for me – If I can hear Meryl Streep too much, it will be distracting.

26:13 Yeah. Because I'll be thinking that's Meryl not... And also it's just a gender thing as well. You know, it should have been a lioness kind of thing. But if they are good at it and if the performance is good, they're going to sell it. And also I think it's probably deliberate because in terms of... getting the outrage going online is part of the marketing. Yes, yeah, people are talking about it. And I refuse to be outraged. Right, yeah, and somebody made a really good point that I heard talking about this was that in the movie The Exorcist, right, the movie about demonic possession, the voice of the demon devil was actually voiced by a woman.

26:57 You couldn't tell it. It was like, it seemed... very sinister. It didn't seem, you know, like female coded necessarily, but it did. So equal opportunity. Women can be just as scary as men. It's terrifying. And vice versa. It's probably more an issue if you can... if you're picturing Meryl Streep, so that's what I mean. It's the, when your brain is sort of firing into Mamma Mia mode and the screen is Aslan. But I know that they will have... They would have considered all of that. It would be up to the sound team to make sure it's processed in such a way that we don't get any of that.

27:39 Well, and part of what I'm interested in seeing is how the reaction, how the actors were able to react against it. Because Meryl Streep was there sometimes on set reading lines. And so they were actually reacting to it. They said they had like a puppet, you know, a large Aslan head that they were... that they were looking at. But Meryl Streep said that at one point she was up on a ladder reading with her script, reading to them. So they're actually interacting with the voice itself, whereas I know with the original Mind the Witch and the Wardrobes, Liam Neeson's voice was brought in in post-production afterwards. They would have had somebody else there delivering the lines, but having the person whose voice is that they're actually responding to there and interacting with the actors, I think that can...

28:26 that I think creates an environment for a better response from the actors, allows you to actually enter into that imaginative world more easily. So yeah, I'm hopeful. Yeah, and going forward, if she does more Narnia films, it'd be, and if this sort of, glam rock era, 60s rock as well, works, then you could imagine that each of the Narnia films could have a different sort of musical genre. You know, the line of witch and the wardrobe can be, I don't know. whoever moves her in prints or somebody, some kind of 90s type stuff going on or whatever, you could imagine that she can pick different eras to give each film a sort of different flavor and leaving this sort of the previous generation's rock music for this first one.

29:18 So it's quite clever, I think. Okay, so we are both refusing to clutch our pearls and be upset about it. Right. We are both thinking, oh, that sounds interesting. Yeah. Good luck. Yeah. I think there are some ways it could fail, and my biggest worry is about how the children match up because the children look like more regular casting, how they match up to sort of more sort of, you know, huge sort of orchestral, loud rock music world. But we'll see.

29:58 We'll see. Okay, so just sort of briefly touching on some other news. There are some stills from the Hobbiton set that was published by Warner Brothers. I don't know if you've seen those, but this is for filming for the Andy Serkis, The Hunt for Gollum. Did you notice those at all? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw the one, the official one, and then another one of, I can't remember if it was a director of photography or something. There's a whole spread of them. There's one which looks like Frodo, an older Frodo going into Bag End. That's one that I saw, yeah.

30:39 There's one that could be Rosie and Sam or a couple who looks like Rosie and Sam. There's some with pumpkins and children. And there's one of Andy Serkis standing outside Bagshot Row with a long camera in front of him. He's obviously filming some kind of wide shot. The point of these, I think, for what it's worth, is that they are picking autumn as the tone for this opening. It looks wet. It's not the happy summer of the previous Hobbitons. They presumably filmed it in the New Zealand autumn slash winter.

31:21 So I think it's saying something. My suspicion is it's... That could be the venue for the retrospective. You know, we survived and now looking back, this is what happened at the moment just before Frodo departs. But it also could be when they set out because they set out on the 22nd of November. September in the autumn so it's also useful for filming from that point of view so that's what I gleaned from that and of course we all know what Hobbiton looks like I did check in have a look at Hobbiton as a result and they've added since I went there you can now do a wild walk and meet some stone trolls Oh, wow.

32:12 Those prop stone trolls or a version of them have been put. So there's an extra thing to go and see. I don't think I'll be flying back to New Zealand just to see those, but it looked very fun. Yeah. So that was the news there. Oh, and the other sort of tiny little fragments was that Jamie Dornan, who is playing Aragorn, is getting on well, according to Andy Serkis, because it will be his film, as is the one hunting. And then, of course, you've got the... there's a sort of glimpse of Gandalf having, you know, Ian McKellen in his Gandalf makeup.

32:54 So he's obviously gone back to reprise. What do you think they're doing with the autumn setting? Yeah, I think that's interesting tonally, right? So this film, I think, isn't going to be, I think, if you had thought that it was going to be set in the Shire, and it would be like an optimistic film. But I don't know if that's setting the tone for the rest of this. This is kind of like a fall. This is like going into the winter that will shortly happen. fall over all of middle earth with Sauron and the ring, um, to, to kind of set. Yeah. So either there's a part perhaps tonally, but then also to set it apart from the films themselves.

33:34 Right. To, to show like, Hey, this is Hobbiton in a slightly different light. And so perhaps that is a way to kind of prepare people, uh, for the difference that this is a slightly different film. It's set in the same universe, but it's not, uh, same timeline technically. Right. Uh, uh, cinematic universe, cinematic adaptation of Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson's vision, but slightly different. So we're turning it at a different time. So, yeah, I'm interested. I'll go watch it. Yeah, I suppose I'm just trying to work out where the Hobbiton sits. It's easier to see how it sits for the Stephen Colbert film, which is the Hobbit story.

34:21 I'm guessing here it could be about the fact that the Rangers are looking after the Shire. So it could be almost like seeing their interaction with the Shire and how they're sort of standing on the outside of the Shire keeping bad guys away. Or it could be what I was suggesting if these are the older characters looking back, it could be the idea of Lord of the Rings is it's written with the reports, with the contribution of friends. telling them what happened. So it could be whilst Frodo is writing it down. So, you know, you start with a book and, you know, Gandalf taught me that, you know. So that's the sort of connecting tissue there.

35:03 I don't know. But I think the autumn is really important for the Hobbits. It's the birthdays. It's when people set out on adventures and when they return. Yeah. So it has that feel. Anyway, we'll see. I think the release date for that is sometime at the end of next year, isn't it? Yeah, and it also just happens to match the release window, the season around which the movie would probably be released as well. Yes, okay. Yes, that's right, because quite often it's really weird if, say, you're watching a film and the timeline has slid and you're suddenly finding yourself in Christmas because they've decided to put it out in, you know, May.

35:56 They did that with the Sherlock retellings where clearly, clearly it'd been time to be released at what we have over here is like a fireworks night, bonfire night. It was a big... But of course, it ended up in New Year or something. You're thinking, why are they talking about Bonfire Night? It was, yeah, so that does happen when things shift. Okay, so that's the news so far on Lord of the Rings, extra films. Stephen Colbert said when he came over to get his, what did he win, an Emmy or something, that he's working full time on it. So he seems to be enjoying himself writing the film after this.

36:37 I wonder how much the fortune of that film is tied to the success of The Hunt for Gollum. Anyway, we'll see. We'll see. I just wanted to also mention, because we've not ever talked about it, another big sort of UK fantasy franchise that's sort of coming along, which I don't know that much about, though I do know the author. That's Catherine Rundle's Impossible Creatures. which has been bought by Disney for, I think, a multi-movie deal. They've really thrown lots of money at it. And she's writing it with her partner, who's also representing her.

37:20 So there's a sort of a team where they've managed to sort of get some power for themselves in what is quite hard to do against these sort of film studios. The reason I'm mentioning her is because she's another Oxford author. And as the Oxford Central Fantasy, we should mention her existence. She is also an academic and wrote a very respected biography of the poet John Donne, which is very good. She's an unusual... Her backstory is full of all sorts of unusual things.

38:02 And she is based in one of the most bizarre colleges in Oxford. So she basically lives in a fantasy world. And she described her politics as being closer to Philip Pullman than J.K. Rowling. Anyway, that's what's happening there. Have you come across her writing at all? She made it all in the States. Yes, yes. I think she got the Barnes & Noble Book of the Year for children over here. And yeah, so I've read Impossible Creatures, and it is good. It is mythologically rich. You can tell that she knows and is honoring and appreciates classical mythology. And so that's something that I appreciated.

38:44 It does... It is tonally closer to his dark materials than it is to Harry Potter, to the Wizarding World. But I think, but it's still, but it isn't quite as... I don't want to say cynical sometimes. I think it comes across in Pullman's writing for children. I think that it is more... There is the ending of the book. And so there's a mixture of comedy and tragedy. And even in the midst of tragedy, there is hope.

39:24 Yeah. and explicitly. And so I think, yeah, I enjoyed it. I picked it up actually after. I hadn't had a chance, right? It had been on my list. And then when I learned about Disney, picking up the rights for it, I said, I need to look at this now. And apparently, and looking into it, so she, it was initially... planned as a trilogy of books. But after some of these developments and talks about kind of fleshing things out, it's now become a five book planned series. The third book just came out, I believe, or is either coming out or just came out, the third book. So of a planned five.

40:04 And after... talking about with Disney about really they want to kind of develop this into an IP in itself. And so she's slated to write the first two scripts with her creative partner. And she also has plans beyond those five books now that she kind of has plotted out or planned. She wants to write some like prequels, spinoff stories to kind of further enrich the world, similar to what has been done with the Wizarding World. This is fascinating because we saw what happened to Fantastic Beasts. Do you think it has the charm and the humor and the sort of child-centered adventure to carry it? Or does it have the Philip Pullman problem, which is it's not that charming?

40:48 For children, yeah. It isn't as... Yeah, it didn't have the same sense of whimsy and wonder. In the story, there's two children as the main characters, one is a native to this magical world that exists kind of. not a lot like not inside or within ours, like the wizarding world with Harry Potter, but this is like a separate realm where there's entrance into a different world. And so there's the boy from our world who comes in here. So you do get the sense of wonder through his, through his perspective. But it isn't, it isn't as whimsical and fantastic as the early Harry Potter books and even the later Harry Potter books where you still have that kind of like edge of whimsy.

41:34 And so, yeah. So the, and then the issue, I think when, when, uh, the golden compass came out, when it was adapted into a film starring Daniel Craig, ironically or unironically, wicked uncle, wicked father, right. Wicked father instead of wicked uncle. Yeah. So typecast for sure. But he, so that film, I know that like, you know, this is coming out around, it came out after Narnia, I believe, right? The Golden Compass film adaptation. So again, so there's different, I think that one appealed. more to adults or there were more adults I know who wanted their children that they were like, they're excited. This was there for some people, right?

42:15 His dark materials is like the anti-Narnia for them. So they're like a reaction to it. They see it as like a personal identity, a statement as like Narnia is, this is how I feel about Narnia. Narnia is presenting this world and which is tied to religion. And his dark materials is clearly kind of like anti-establishment, anti-institutional religion. And so they'll identify with that one. And so it appealed more, I think, to adults philosophically than it did to the children. I had actually just... And anecdotally, the person lived in an apartment or a room in somebody else's house. He had two young children, elementary school-aged children.

42:55 And he was very excited for the film to come out because he liked the book. And I think it's somebody who identified himself. as kind of like anti-Narnian in his worldview and wanted his children to be exposed to that and was really wanting them to, you know, become like awakened, alivened by that view. And they went and saw it. But the children, like it just didn't seem like it connected in the same way to them, the children, from their perspective, as it did to him as an adult. So yeah. It could be something similar. I do think it isn't as, like I said, it isn't as, if you're putting his dark materials on one end of the hole and like Narnia, those sentiments there, I would see Wizarding World Harry Potter kind of being in the middle, but as in the earlier books, leaning more towards the Narnia sense of like wonder magic, whimsy, and then later as the protagonists grow older leaning maybe a little bit more into like the reality, like maybe more like political realities, kind of edging more towards Pullman.

44:03 But of course, I think Impossible Creatures, at least the first book, I haven't read the other ones yet, but Impossible Creatures, I think, is sitting kind of right there in the middle to begin with, whereas the early Harry Potter books, I think, are leaning more towards the whimsy and wonder side. So I think, and the characters aren't children. They're really like characters, three teens, almost teens. And so I think it's not going to be like children, like a Harry Potter movie. could appeal to some elementary school age children at that world. I think this is probably going to be one they'll want to because Disney will want to try to, I think, push it for a younger audience.

44:44 I think it's slated to be PG. So there are those in the film adaptation could perhaps do something different because it is being produced and promoted by Disney that Disney could have some notes like Want It to air on the side of the wonder. And Wimstein emphasized that in the film adaptation. That's my guess. It's kind of what will happen. But it's definitely needy enough to attract an adult audience in terms of mythology and... And even like ecology, right? So it's dealing with fantastical creatures and their world is kind of like slowly dying. The magic is being kind of drained from their world. So they're kind of facing a magical slash ecological threat.

45:28 to their world and this boy is coming over and trying to find out what the source of that is and and return it so there's definitely like modern like relevant themes for the world that we live in today but I think yeah so so I think you're right that the trick is with some of these books and it can be difficult with adults writing for children that Very often, it's the concerns of adults as adults that can make their way into children's literature. But for those special, blessed authors who are able to either remember what it was like when they were a child or have close relationships with children today and understand what they're concerned about, what they're afraid of.

46:16 What do they love? What enlivens them right now as a child? But those are the authors that seem to be able to capture the vibrancy of youth. And I think that's what C.S. Lewis did with Narnia really well. Well, that means I have to go away and educate myself. I have read other books, but not this series. So, yeah, I will go and do that before the films come out. She's a very fine writer. I'm just intrigued because this secret sauce of what it is that makes something a good IP, I sometimes fear that... studios think they've got it and actually they're missing something and I don't and we'll see if this this is the thing it would be fascinating to see and of course they might do what they did with Cressida Cowell is you take an idea and the films are completely different from the books.

47:08 Great. Yeah, well, the fact that the author is writing it, is writing the screenplay, to me, it says it'll probably queue closer to the book itself. So, yeah, I don't know. Interesting. Yeah, it is interesting. And I think just really quickly on this, so I know some of our chats we haven't seen. given recommendations on things lately, but there was a book that I just read that is directly relevant to this about writing for children. Mac Barnett is an award-winning children's author, and he had a book that came out this past year called Make Believe, the subtitle on writing for children.

47:49 Um, and it's, it's, it's phenomenal. And I think it's good for like storytelling in general, but especially for people who want to write to a younger audience. Um, he, and I didn't know this about him. I, I was exposed to him, um, reading his children's books to my picture books to my child and was just delighted. He writes a And just some like, just like delightful books, but also are like offbeat. They're not saccharine. They're just like completely original and captivate children and myself. And he wrote this book. He was chosen as kind of the children's literature laureate for the United States for I think last year or whatever.

48:35 And so he, this is what he did during his kind of year of being the laureate was writing this book for adults about writing for children. It's very engaging. So it's a children's author. I found out that he, I think I need to find out this, but it sounds like he went to grad school for Norwegian medieval Scandinavian court poetry. So I can deep like... academic background, but who's writing these like, silly, wonderful stories for children that are just delightful. And so his, his way of talking about storytelling, and engaging with your audience and understanding an audience, especially for children, I think is well, well worth anyone reading.

49:18 It's just Yeah, it's and it's a short, it's a very short read. If you're like, he does the audio book, and it's like, two and a half hours long. Okay, so that's special. Yeah. It's very short, and it has a printed book with some nice little whimsical illustrations in it, but it's for adults written well, and his theory, he does the greatest... like a literary analysis of Margaret Weiss Brown's Good Night Moon, American classic book, this like phenomenal literary analysis of it. That's worth the price of admission just for this children's book. Like how he's seeing like philosophically what's happening there. Anyway, that's my recommendation. So that was Make Believe by? Make Believe by Mac Barnett, B-A-R-N-E-T-T, I believe.

50:04 Okay. Okay. So just on book news, I was very excited that I received the proof copies for my children's book, which is coming out on the 31st of December in the UK, called The Mystery of Treason Castle. Children's Castle. Treason Castle. And what's really fun about the proof copies here, which are very nicely produced, thank you, Usborne, is that there's two versions. And they're sending them out. One of them, it says on the front, you are on Team Innocent. And the other one says you are on Team Murderer, which, of course, is the thing of the game. And it's got some of the interior artwork in place.

50:48 But I've just received today... The PDF of the final artwork in the interior, which is always really exciting to see. And so we're cooking up, taking these round to – because proof copies go to sort of bookshops and, you know, people who have influence in the industry. They're going to be doing some proof drops but in costume. Oh, fun. This is when being an author becomes – gets out of your imaginary world in your study and you have to go in the real world and make a complete idiot of yourself. But that's part of the job. That's exciting. So I have questions for you about that.

51:29 So for those proof copies, are those going to be the final copies? They'll have two different A and B covers there or is that just kind of promotional for the advanced reading copies? That is the promotional copy. The final cover is on the back. Oh, okay. Which is a sort of dynamic castle. I think it would be just the one cover. But I haven't quite, we can probably lean into it. There is going to be another one. I'm writing the follow-up at the moment. So I don't know. We'll see how it goes. But it would be quite fun to have something in the interior that is a kind of URL.

52:10 We can probably do some point-of-sale material. That's great. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, yeah, some bookmarks, some other. Yeah. So when's the shelf date for that one will be available? It's a January book, which means it comes out on the 31st of December. Yeah. So the idea here is that you don't want to put something out in the Christmas market because it gets cluttered by either really big sellers or, you know, sticker books with nativity scenes or Father Christmas. So we have a sort of slot in the earlier part of the year, which is in the run up to World Book Day in end of Feb, beginning of March. So that's a good slot to be in.

52:57 doing it then maybe doing a little tour of schools and that kind of thing and that's fantastic or being on the who knows i might be on the the summer festival circuit as well we'll have to see it all depends how well it sells and that's yeah i don't know so buy coffee folks Yes, everyone by a copy. Free order now, yes. And it's, of course, going to Frankfurt, which is happening very soon. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's happening. Yeah, that's happening in October. Yeah, that's the first, second week of October. Yeah. So what happens behind the scenes, if you're interested, is so my agent is representing this book. She is representing the foreign rights. So her team who do the foreign rights will take it there.

53:38 Mm-hmm. And so we'll try and get it into as many territories as possible. And I've sort of said, go to the territories where they've got, because it's sort of inspired by the traitors TV program. That's the same kind of game is happening in the book to what that is, except as a layer of a real murder that happens within that context. And so it's already a sort of known idea because of the TV program in many, many territories. And then there was also the audio rights were separate this time. So it's just been sold for the audio rights. So that's nice.

54:19 Excellent. And so it's great for... Sort of begins to build. Begins to build. Yeah, yeah. And so when it's at, say it's at the Frankfurt Book Festival, is that where your agents and publishers will be like hoping to get to sell rights for international for different translations of the book? Yeah. So what happens at Frankfurt is publishers will go with like, or agents in my case, will go with sort of books they're promoting online. And it's a series of meetings that you don't normally hear until sometime afterwards. Because what happens is people take their books back to their, you know, home and say, oh, this sounds like a book that would fit on our list.

55:01 Right. Sometimes you do sell there and then. It just varies. Yeah. And sometimes if you're, say, like a, you know, a big seller like Richard Osman is, there'll be people competing for the rights. That's unlikely to be my case. Right. Right. So it just depends what the buzz is around a title. But it's still done by lots. I've been to Frankfurt once back in the 2010s with a German publisher. And it's still done in this sort of way of you all go to this massive conference center and, it's it's crazy it is a overwhelming world it's definitely not somewhere to go as an author unless you're invited by a publisher because you're such a small small little minnow in a massive massive right massive pool yeah i was very close very close to going to frankfurt book festival um this year so the book my book quest of wonders that just came out is in uh the they'll be featuring their robinsberger press the one that published it they'll It is in German.

56:09 So people who are actually German can get a copy of it already translated for them. So they're doing some things there. And it sounded like very interesting place. Like I felt like I would want to like go and wander. If you've got something like that, where you've got a book that's actually that that's fine to go because you've got someone you can go up to up, you know, you've got a home base. But just wandering up because you want to talk to publishers or whatever as an author, it's really difficult. People do that at the London Book Fair. I know they do that. Okay, okay. The London Book Fair. When is London Book Fair? That's in usually April time. April. And that usually has a program for… writers and authors like separate seminar type thing so there's a reason for going but i'm just sort of saying if you're out there thinking oh i'll go there and pitch my book it's not a very good place to pitch because it's professionals pitching to other professionals unless it's organized there's a sort of we're open to see you kind of thing.

57:12 Otherwise, you just feel very depressed, I think, even by the time you got back because you'll be thinking, wow, there's a lot of books in the world. So I went because I was on a shortlist for a prize, so that was fine. You know, there was like a presentation and a dinner and all that kind of thing. But I did come away thinking, gosh, that was an interesting experience. I met Sarah J. Mars on that visit, so that was fun. Oh, thanks. He was coming up as the new, young, fresh-faced, rising author. So that was, you know, you do meet people. But, yeah, so that's the wonderful world of these huge book fairs.

57:56 Right, Jacob, we should probably end it there. Thank you so much for talking through this wide range of news of me. It's been great fun. And, yeah, fingers crossed that Greta Gerwig gets her vision actually really works because I've got high hopes now. Yeah, yeah. So we'll find out February 12th in cinemas and then on Netflix in April, I believe, is when you can view it from the comfort of your own couch. Yeah, Netflix Films, I suppose, is going to come out. I will definitely try and see it in a cinema, though, I think. Yeah. Particularly with all that rock music going on. Right. Okay, thank you very much for joining us.

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