Why is Hollywood so interested in Narnia

A.� After Harry Potter's Hogwarts and Lord of the Rings' Middle Earth, Narnia is the latest magical fantasy world to receive the Hollywood treatment. The first live-action film of C.S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe will go into production next year, after the author's family agreed to a �50 million deal to adapt the best-seller for the big screen.

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Q.� Who will star in the new film

A.� Glenn Close and Sigourney Weaver are being considered to play the evil White Witch, while John Boorman, the British director of Hope And Glory, has expressed an interest in bringing the film to the big screen. British children are being sought to play Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy in the $100 million (�70 million) adaptation. The film is being made by Walden Media, a company which beat Disney to the rights. The New York company is backed by Philip Anschutz, a billionaire who owns several cinema chains. The Narnia films also have the backing of the Lewis family.

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Q.� Why hasn't a film been made before

A.� C.S. Lewis rejected overtly commercial approaches from Hollywood. Lewis, who died in 1963, had a low opinion of Disney after a planned animated Lion film collapsed. His stepson, Douglas Gresham, will oversee the project. He says he has long been seeking a producer who will retain the Christian ethic of the morality tales. Mr Gresham, son of Joy Gresham, the American divroce whose tragic marriage to the Oxford don was turned into the film Shadowlands, sold his stake in the Lewis copyright 25 years ago to fund a dairy farms business in Tasmania. He is consultant to the estate.

Walden Media said it had won the rights because it promised to retain the books' "educational mission". The Narnia books have been a passion since childhood for Cary Granat, former president of Miramax Films' Dimension Label, who runs Wladen Media.

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Q.� When was the book first published

A. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was first published in 1950. More than 40 million copies of the Narnia books have been sold and the publisher HarperCollins is planning a major new push to coincide with the films. The book was chosen as the most influential of the 20thC by parents, teachers and librarians and has been adapted many times for the stage, television and radio.

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By Katharine MacColl