This afternoon, WETA's Richard Taylor lead a special panel from Walt Disney Studios for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, the hotly anticipated follow-up to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Director Andrew Adamson (who also directed the last film) joined the panel live via satellite from Prague, where filming is just three weeks away from wrapping.

The first exclusive we got to see was a fully rendered pre-vis animatic, that showed a dynamic action scene where the four Pevensie siblings, along with Prince Caspian himself, and their allies Reepicheep the mouse (and a few of his pals) and Trumpkin and Nikabrik the dwarves, covertly infiltrate the palace of the evil King Miraz to raid it for weapons. Giant gryphons carried the humans the castle to safe landings atop the ramparts (one memorable shot was of the crudely-rendered CGI Susan felling a Telmarine guard wit her bow & arrow shot while still in mid-air in the gryphon's claws). The mice get quite a lot of stealthy action to do, and the dwarves play their part as well. There were tons of sweeping camera angles and clever action bits that were surprising in their scope and ingenuity.

So right off the bat, the message was sent to us loud and clear: Prince Caspian is going to be much bigger, badder, and more action-packed than Wardrobe. Adamson himself reiterated this fact more than once as he spoke about the film, and how the book proved much more difficult to adapt than the first one. Readers of the book know that while there are a number of memorable scenes, Caspian is much lighter on actual plot than its predecessor. So Adamson and his team had to take some liberties to expand and enhance both the drama and the scope of the action, to not only make a full-length film, but to fulfill their mandate of making a bigger and better movie than the first. The word "epic" was thrown out several times, as was the description of a "darker and thematically more mature" movie.

Next we got to see a special promotional video put together just for Comic-Con, where the cast and crew talked about returning to Narnia, the enlarged scale of this movie, and where we got to see some of the first-ever film footage from Prince Caspian. (Looked utterly gorgeous!)

 The story finds Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy returning to Narnia just one year after their first trip, only to find that 1,300 years have passed in Narnia, and their former kingdom has fallen into ruin at the hands of a vicious band of humans called the Telmarines, who are led by the wicked King Miraz. Miraz side-stepped the rightful heir to the throne, Prince Caspian, and planned to have him killed, but Caspian escapes and joins up with the Pevensies to reclaim his kingdom. For their part, the Pevensie siblings find themselves very nostalgic about their return to Narnia, according to Adamson, but they find that the land is a much darker place than they left it. The dramatic potential therein will be fully explored for all four of them.

Then Adamson welcomed to the panel from there in Prague, the actor playing Caspian himself, Ben Barnes. Barnes has been signed to portray the crucial role in this film and two more, including the next one scheduled to go before cameras, Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Barnes will be posting a blog about his experiences making the film to Narnia.com soon.

Producer Mark Johnson told the audience that Walden Media and Disney's desire is to make films of all seven books, and promised that "as long as [movie-goers] keep embracing these movies, [Walden and Disney] will keep making them." He then revealed that the plan is to keep the movies in production back-to-back for the next six years, with a new one releasing every May, starting with next year's Caspian. That plan would have Dawn Treader in theaters in May of 2009.

Johnson also told the crowd that all seven of the books represent very different cinematic and visual experiences, so the fact that different directors will be handling the different films won't really be a problem, as there isn't a lot of visual continuity to maintain through the series.

Spoiler alert!

Adamson shared a story about how he recently shot the famous scene from the book where Aslan informs Peter ad Susan that they will not be returning to Narnia, which makes Prince Caspian the series' swan song for both William Moseley and Anna Popplewell. Adamson said the actors and the entire crew found it an incredibly emotional moment, both on-camera and off.

Spoilers end.

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