The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe ever". He stated that "nothing is more fun to write" than the Doctor at Christmas, as he considered it "his kind of day. Everything's bright and shiny, everybody's having a laugh, and nobody minds if you wear a really stupid hat". The story is partly inspired by "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (from "The Chronicles of Narnia") by C. S. Lewis. Moffat said that "Doctor Who" and the Narnia stories "come from the same impulse that children have of escaping to another world." The scene in which the Doctor is showing the Arwells around the house originally included
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe make a faithful adaptation of the novel set in Britain. ""Harry Potter" came along, and all those cultural or geographical lines were broken," Mark Johnson explained. "When "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" was being developed at Paramount, the imperative was to set it in the U.S., and it just doesn't hold. [...] It's not the book." Guillermo del Toro turned down the offer to direct due to his commitment on "Pan's Labyrinth". Following an Academy Award win for "Shrek", director Andrew Adamson began adapting the source material with a 20-page treatment based on his memories of the book.