Religious Retailing - Marketing 'Narnia' Without a Christian Lion

For more than a half century, "The Chronicles of Narnia"

captivated children with tales of Aslan, a tawny lion who ruled a wintry Narnian kingdom of dwarfs, fauns and occasionally errant English schoolchildren.

Mixing fantasy with Christian allegories and imagery, the author C. S. Lewis, one of the 20th century's most influential interpreters of Christianity, created a saga that spanned seven novels, beginning in 1950 with "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,"

which have sold more than 65 million copies in more than 30 languages.

Now, borrowing a page from a literary upstart named Harry Potter, the Lewis estate and its publishers have started shaping a marketing makeover of Aslan and assorted Narnian habitués to expand readership and extend the brand.

They have struck deals to license plush Narnian toys. The series publisher, HarperCollins, revealed plans to create new Narnia novels by unidentified authors, to the outrage of some devoted readers. (What next? "Narnia Barbie in a school uniform?" asked one fan in a Lewis electronic forum.)

Most striking of all, they have developed a discreet strategy to avoid direct links to the Christian imagery and theology that suffused the Narnia novels and inspired Lewis.

"They're turning Narnia into a British version of Mickey Mouse," said John G. West, co-editor of The C. S. Lewis Readers Encyclopedia

and an associate professor of political science at Seattle Pacific University. "What they've figured out is that Harry Potter is a cash cow. And here's a way they can decompartmentalize the children's novels from the rest of Lewis. That's what is so troubling. Narnia is a personal creation, and they're turning it into a corporate creation."

The publishing strategy surfaced in a HarperCollins memo. "Obviously this is the biggie as far as the estate and our publishing interests are concerned," wrote an executive from HarperSanFranciso, an imprint of HarperCollins involved in the Lewis publishing program. "We'll need to be able to give emphatic assurances that no attempt will be made to correlate the stories to Christian imagery/theology."

The memo was written in connection with the development of a public television documentary about the life of Lewis. The producer, Carol Dean Hatcher, had negotiated contracts to create an illustrated companion book and teaching video for Zondervan Publishing House, the Christian publishing arm of HarperCollins. Zondervan was also poised to donate about $150,000 for the production.

HarperCollins and its publishing arms were in the midst of ambitious expansion plans for Lewis's works. They repackaged nine classic titles, organized two Web sites (www.cslewisclassics.com

and www.narnia.com

), developed an essay contest and asked contemporary authors to write new forewords. By the fall of 2003 they expected to publish simpler picture books for younger children and a new Narnia novel.

The negotiations over the documentary unraveled, Ms. Hatcher said, amid pressures from the publisher and the estate to eliminate references in the script to Christian imagery in the Narnia series.

"I was appalled," said Ms. Hatcher, who is still trying to produce the documentary, "C. S. Lewis: An Examined Life," with Oregon Public Broadcasting as the presenting station. "I think there are ways to approach C. S. Lewis and Narnia that have nothing to do with religious background. However, it is astounding to minimize that part of this; it's like doing a video biography of Hank Aaron and refusing to acknowledge he was a baseball player."

For its part, the Lewis estate insists that there is no calculated plan to reshape the author's image. Simon Adley, managing director of the C. S. Lewis Company, noted that the publishers had successfully increased sales of Lewis's "Mere Christianity,"

an adult title that explains and defends Christianity.

"It's fatuous to suggest that we're trying to take the Christian out of C. S. Lewis," Mr. Adley said. "We wouldn't have made the effort that we have with `Mere Christianity' if we felt that way. It's just crazy. I suppose you could get a little depressed by this. I'm trying to get more people to read."

But the response from Harper Collins was more ambiguous. Lisa Herling, a spokeswoman, issued a written statement noting that Ms. Hatcher had revealed "confidential in-house correspondence that was part of the incomplete process" involving Ms. Hatcher's projects.

"One of the issues the correspondence addressed was whether the project would appeal to the secular as well as the evangelical market," Ms. Herling wrote. "The goal of HarperCollins is to publish the works of C. S. Lewis to the broadest possible audience and leave any interpretation of the works to the reader."

As a series, the Narnia books are valuable property for HarperCollins, which recently acquired the rights to publish all of Lewis's works.

Lately, the Narnia series has flourished anew because of the Harry Potter halo effect on young readers searching for something else to read. In the last two years, sales have increased 20 percent annually.

That renewed attention brought new focus on an author untouched by marketing and image-making. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Clive Staples Lewis was a professor of medieval and Renaissance English whose Oxford literary circle, the Inklings, included J. R. R. Tolkien.
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