Original advertising artwork for the movie, B&W, left, colorized version, right. To me it looks like the artist cobbled bits and pieces of the concept art together before the characters’ final appearances were decided on. The B&W version was intended for media releases, perhaps. The color version appeared on posters of the time and VHS and DVD covers for a long time afterward.
This press released for the animated The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe details the involvement of the Episcopal Church in the project. I know I lot of Narnia fans may be yawning at that, but it’s interesting to read because without that involvement, there wouldn’t have been a special in the first place. They were the ones who bought the rights from the C. S. Lewis estate. The estate didn’t sell them to just anyone and of course they weren’t free either, as copyright law was still in effect. Even this small church had to buy rights to carve and install statues of the Narnia characters for their church’s interior.
It was after the Episcopal Radio-TV Foundation bought the rights that the Childrens Television Workshop became involved and then Bill Melendez. The letter doesn’t say when the rights were purchased, but as with most media projects, the inception and creative process probably lasted for years.
A perfect storm of circumstances let the project bloom in the late 1970s, which was the decade of quality educational childrens TV. (Reagan came along to spoil it, as I detail in this post about The Transformers.)
So let’s salute Caroline Rakestraw, a media pioneer and visionary for Narnia’s potential!
