Narnia gets dumped: Fans of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia will be sad to learn that those are the only two installments of the children’s series that Disney plans to bring to the big screen. According to the Hollywood Reporter, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which was meant to hit theatres in May 2010, has been put on hold due to “budgetary and logistical reasons.” As the first two films cost around $400 million to make (talking animals cost a pretty penny), we think this is a smart move for Mickey, but word on the street is that FOX is interested in scooping up his sloppy seconds. [THR]
Kindles sold out until February: We hope for your sake you weren’t planning on scooping one of these up as a last-minute holiday gift. The Daily Beast thinks that this — and a general uptick on the sales of other e-book devices — might be a death knell for printed books, but we have to disagree. Until such gadgets can mimic the smell of our favorite tattered copy of Mrs. Dalloway and provide a way for readers to scrawl random hand-written thoughts onto their pages, we’re sticking with the original. Plus $359 is really freaking expensive. [TDB]
And Jonah Hill as the Skipper?:Gilligan’s Island is coming to the big screen and the show’s creator, Sherwood Schwartz, has some interesting casting ideas: “Schwartz broke the news at the Beverly Hills induction ceremony of Television Academy’s Hall of Fame on December 9th, where he told TV Guide that he wants Michael Cera to play Gilligan and Beyonce Knowles to play Ginger.” Oy. This sounds like it could go horribly wrong. [/film]
The best movies you might have missed: indieWIRE’s annual Critics Poll is up, with Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Flight of the Red Balloon topping the list of smaller flicks you might have missed. We were glad to see that three of our personal favorites — WALL-E, Happy-Go-Lucky and Wendy & Lucy — made the top five, too. [IW]