Narnia sets Irish box office record

The big screen movie of The Chronicles of Narnia left cinema audiences spellbound this weekend taking in over €1m in three days.

The children’s classic, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, beat several other blockbusters including Toy Story 2 which took in €912,000 in its opening weekend, and went on to make €4.63m in Ireland alone.

The classic children’s tale was the biggest opening for a Disney film making €1.061m since it opened in cinemas across Ireland on December 9 last.

The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe took $108.8m (€91m) and went straight to number one in 14 countries.

The $150m (€125m) movie features Tilda Swinton as the White Witch and Liam Neeson as the voice of Aslan the lion.

Harper Collins, the publishers of Belfast author C S Lewis’s novels, have reported over 42,503 copies of the books were sold in Ireland and the UK in the seven weeks before the film’s release.

This places the book at number one in the children’s paperbacks and 24th in the Official UK Top 50 book charts.

The classic edition of the book, which is illustrated by Pauline Baynes, entered the UK book chart this week at number 18.

The Chronicles of Narnia was a series of fantasy novels for children written by C S Lewis – the books are a Christian allegory, with Aslan representing Christ.