Prince Caspian Set to Rule

The fantasy movie The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, is set to deliver an almost on-par performance with the Marvel superhero movie Iron Man, at the box office this week. Iron Man raked in $99 million at the box office when it first opened two weeks ago.

Industry pundits are predicting that the box office numbers for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, the sequel to the hugely successful 2005 movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, would be around $85 million, which is not too far off the mark that Iron Man set.

The prequel to Prince Caspian, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, had raked in $65.6 million when it opened at the box office and went on to gross an impressive $292 million.

Pre-release surveys indicate that Prince Caspian has been scoring heavily in terms of viewing sentiment among viewers across demographics. It has also received good reviews from critics so far.

Prince Caspian is based on the second book of a series of books that C.S. Lewis wrote in the 1950s. The central character is a little more grown up than the children in the earlier movie, and is played by Ben Barnes. Both the Narnia movies have been directed by Andrew Adamson.

Speaking about The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, distribution president at Disney Chuck Viane said, “This is the quintessential general-audience film – moms and dads, families, date-pic couples, teens by themselves – this plays to everybody.”

The co-financer and equity partner for Prince Caspian is Walden Media, Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz’s production company.

Paramount’s Iron Man has, in the meantime, spent the last two weeks at the top of the North American box office and is set to touch the $200 million mark, having already brought in $188 million by Wednesday. Its supposed competition, Warner Bros.’ Speed Racer, has turned out to be a damp squib in comparison and, despite placing third, has managed to rake in only $18.5 million.