Best Fantastical Film series

With the release of the first half of the last Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, approaching rapidly, there has been a lot of talk about the success of other film series based on well known fantasy books. While Harry Potter is one of the most successful series, there are many others who provide a great box office draw:

Lord of the Rings

This was an extremely successful series of films, using the series created by JRR Tolkien as its base. It is the highest grossing movie trilogy of all time and was universally praised by critics and movie audiences alike. The 3 films won a total of 17 Oscars including Best Picture for Return of the King, as well as a host of other awards. As with all movie adaptations there are debates about the books versus the movies, but each of these is seen as being great movies in their own right.

The Chronicles of Narnia

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is shortly coming out in cinemas and follows the first two successful movie adaptations of C.S. Lewis’ series of 7 books. The first 3 films released were those where the story revolved around the Pevensie family. There is now talk of adapting the other 4 books as films following the first two films’ box office and critical success. The movie trailer is available now and shows fantastic production values as well as the continuation of the story from Prince Caspian.

His Dark Materials

The trilogy by Philip Pullman has so far seen only the first book adapted to film, The Subtle Knife, with a cast of extremely high calibre including Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, Eva Green and Ian McKellan voicing armoured polar bear Iorek Byrnison. The film did draw a lot of controversy for the changes to the religious aspect of the Authority in the books. This would not be carried through to the film versions of books two and three according to the author in a reputable film news publication. The films would follow Lyra’s jorney through the worlds bringing the fantasy to life.

Special Mentions:
Discworld

The famous series by Terry Pratchett has had multiple books adapted to film, including ‘The Colour of Magic’ and ‘The Light Fantastic’ which were the first two books in the series. The most high profile film adaptations have all been those made for Sky 1 television channel which are traditionally first aired around Easter or Christmas.

Alice in Wonderland & Peter Pan
These two books have inspired large numbers of film adaptations over the years, however since the source material is the same; many of the adaptations have been relatively similar. However, both of the books have seen adaptations that were inspired by the original source material, but not directly adapted from it. Notable examples include Tim Burton’s 2010 film, Alice in wonderland, and Hook, the 1991 starring Robin Williams, Julia Roberts and Dustin Hoffman.