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.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the rest of Europe. Worldwide, "Narnia" earned $745,013,115 marking it the 55th highest-grossing film of all-time worldwide. It had a worldwide opening of $107.1 million, marking Disney's fifth largest opening worldwide (at the time it was the largest). It is the third-largest movie worldwide among those released in 2005 and it currently still remains the highest-grossing movie of the "Narnia" franchise worldwide, and separately in North America and overseas. Finally, it is also the most successful film of Walden Media worldwide. The film opened with $23,006,856 in 3,616 theatres on its opening day (Friday, December 9, 2005), averaging $6,363