Spotlight turns on Narnia after King Kong

It's another world centre for another world premiere of another New Zealand-made, Hollywood-backed movie.

Two days after the successful launch of Peter Jackson's King Kong amidst the hubbub of New York's Times Square, Andrew Adamson's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe screens amidst regal splendour in London.

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall head the guest list for the premiere of the movie in the Royal Albert Hall this morning (8.30am NZT).

The famous concert auditorium has been transformed for the occasion into a glittering movie palace, recreating the icy world of Narnia in C. S. Lewis' classic children's novels. Los Angeles-based Adamson, who won an Oscar for the first of the two Shrek movies he co-directed, shot much of the Narnia film around his native Auckland.

Among the cast expected to join him at the premiere are Tilda Swinton (the white witch), Jim Broadbent (Professor Kirke), Ray Winstone and Dawn French (Mr and Mrs Beaver), and the Pevensie children, William Moseley (Peter), Anna Popplewell (Susan), Skandar Keynes (Edmund) and Georgie Henley (Lucy).

Wellington-based digital effects wizard Richard Taylor and other members of his Weta Workshop and Digital teams have dashed from the King Kong premiere to London to see their Narnia work on the big screen in the Royal Albert Hall.

But Jackson, who is reportedly keen to see Narnia at the earliest opportunity, will be in Berlin on his King Kong roadshow while the Narnia premiere is on.

The premiere celebrity guest list includes singers Sir Cliff Richard and Annie Lennox, heavy rocker turned reality tv star Ozzy Osbourne, comic Jennifer Saunders, models Elle MacPherson and Jodie Kidd, and actors Clive Owen, Joan Collins and Julie Walters.

The screening will be followed by a winter wonderland-themed party in Kensington Garden Hotel, decorated with large frosted trees, ice carvings and a giant ice chandelier. Artificial snow will fall on the partygoers, who can put on their skates to take to a specially made ice rink and indulge in Turkish delight, the sweet used by the white witch to tempt Edmund into betraying his siblings in the story.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is the first of seven books Lewis wrote about the fantasy world of Narnia into which the children stumble through a magical wardrobe. Here, with the help of the lion Aslan, they fight to overcome the witch's curse of eternal winter.

The Disney film, which opens to the public on December 8, has received mixed early reviews in Britain. The Times said it was "about as believable and as moving as a pantomime horse" and fell "far short of filling a Rings-shaped hole".

However, the Guardian described it as "a triumph". "It is gorgeous to look at, superbly cast, wittily directed and funny and exciting by turns."

The New York Daily News has tipped Narnia to vie with King Kong for special effects Oscars and American reviews have mainly been positive about Narnia.

The Hollywood Reporter said: "What is lightly sketched in the novel, where much is left to the imagination, blossoms into life full-blown, richly detailed life in the movie".

And the Los Angeles Times said Narnia "remains faithful to the book in both tone and imagery".

- NZPA