Narnia's magic casts spell across the world

Lana Coc-Kroft makes the premiere in Auckland a family occasion. Picture / Greg Bowker

In London it really was winter. The carpet outside the Royal Albert Hall was ice blue, in keeping with its transformation into an ice palace with artificial snow and iced colonnades, and the stars shivered.

Across the world in Auckland, it is of course summer, and at the Civic Theatre ice sculptures of bears battled the humidity.

Two premieres on two sides of the world celebrated The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe yesterday.

London's ice-blue carpet was graced by royalty - Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall - as well as Tilda Swinton, who plays the White Witch, who cursed C. S. Lewis' imaginary world of Narnia with an eternal winter.

Also present were Sir Cliff Richard, Dannii Minogue, Elle Macpherson, Joan Collins, and Annie Lennox.

At least two of the actors, Elizabeth Hawthorne and Shane Rangi, were at the Auckland screening with 2000 other excited moviegoers, including Prime Minister Helen Clark.

Rangi, who featured in all three Lord of the Rings films, plays General Otman in the Narnia epic.

"He's a general of the White Witch's army. So I was on the evil side. As always. I'm so typecast."

He even had a few lines "but nothing big. I went, 'Waaaaarrrrgggh.' You take what you can get. I'm the strong silent type."

Created by New Zealand director Andrew Adamson, the film cost $220 million, put up by US movie giant Disney. The actors were mostly English.

The scenery was equally global, from New Zealand to the Czech Republic, Poland, and England. New Zealand scenes include the great battle, filmed at Flock Hill, a plateau surrounded by the Southern Alps, and Aslan the lion's encampment at Elephant Rocks near Tokarahi, outside Oamaru.

The Auckland premiere had its share of local celebrities, with their children in tow, but there were secretly some excited adults as well.

Theresa Healey said she had just read the condensed children's version of the book to her 4-year-old.

"Lately the movies made from books have been pretty good. Peter Jackson did it very well and I'm sure Andrew Adamson will do just as well. I know because I've watched Shrek so many times I could reel off every line."

Helen Clark said she had never read the books so the movie was "going to be a fresh and novel experience".

"I love films made in New Zealand and looking for bits of scenery you recognise, and I've got to know a bit about the technology behind the animation so I like all the wizardry."

The film will be the third of the troika of blockbusters for which the cinema industry has great hopes this summer, joining King Kong, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which made $3.5 million in New Zealand in its first two weeks.

- Additional reporting NZPA