Prince Caspian has been found and he's a hottie.
According to The Times Online, 26-year-old British actor Ben Barnes will be playing the title role in Disney's upcoming Narnia sequel "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian".
Barnes had been playing the sexually manipulative Dakin in the British National Theatre's production of "The History Boys" since December last year.
This week he surprised them by saying that he had been offered a three-film deal to play Caspian and was leaving right away - before his contract was due.
As a result the production has been left in the lurch with actor Jamie King, the previous theatre run's Dakin, flown in from Los Angeles to take over. National Theatre are said to be considering a lawsuit over breach of contract.
Filming is due to begin this month in New Zealand. The movie is released in cinemas next May.
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Walden Media's Bob Beltz talked with Infuze Magazine about the production of "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" and confirmed much of the same crew from "Lion, Witch & The Wardrobe" will be back behind-the-scenes.
Story wise he says that "everything that is in the book will be in the film" but due to its somewhat different structure, the order of some scenes need to be re-arranged.
He also talked about plans for the future of the franchise. Seems that the studio plans to release the next three films in the series annually from now on.
Each film has almost six months of shooting followed by a nearly year of post-production. To fit the schedule, shooting will begin on the next film when the current film goes into post.
Thus "Caspian" will shoot from February-August for a May 2008 release, "Voyager of the Dawn Treader" will shoot starting very late 2007 or early 2008 for a Summer 2009 release, and "The Silver Chair" very late 2008/early 2009 shoot for a Summer 2010 release.
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