EXCLUSIVE: The C.S. Lewis classic series The Chronicles of Narnia will receive new life on screen. Sony-based TriStar Pictures is joining The Mark Gordon Company, The C.S. Lewis Company, and Entertainment One (eOne) to make The Silver Chair. The film will be financed by TriStar, eOne and The Mark Gordon Company with Sony and eOne distributing the picture. Mark Gordon, C.S. Lewis’ stepson Douglas Gresham, Vincent Sieber, and Melvin Adams will produce the film. Life Of Pi and Finding Neverland scribe David Magee was already writing the script.

This becomes the second live action iteration of the literary classic. The previous films grossed a collective $1.6 billion at the worldwide box office and they were 2005’s The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, 2008’s Prince Caspian and 2010’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The first two came through Disney, and the latter through Fox 2000. The property fits TriStar head Hannah Minghella’s mandate to generate literary properties that will travel, something that fits Tom Rothman’s mandate at Sony. The seven novels in the series have sold over 100 million copies worldwide.

Said Gordon: “Developing this project with The C.S. Lewis Company has been immensely exciting and a real joy. We are so pleased to team up with our good friends at TriStar and our partners at eOne to introduce this new, magical chapter of the Narnia franchise to fans around the world, both old and new.”

Minghella grew up loving the books. “Reading The Chronicles of Narnia was one of the formative experiences of my childhood, just as it has been for children around the world for generations,” she said in a statement. “To have the opportunity to bring new life to the Narnia films with a new creative team is a career highlight. Our mission is to build TriStar Pictures as a home for filmmaker-driven literary and commercial movies, and this film represents a huge step forward for us. We’re thrilled to be working with Mark, Doug, Melvin, Vincent, and David as we adapt The Silver Chair.”

Gresham, the stepson of the late author Lewis said “It’s been both fun and exciting to work with Mark Gordon and David Magee to develop the next Narnian movie, and now it’s a thrill to welcome Tristar to our Narnia family. I greatly look forward to plunging again into the joys and challenges of once more bringing Narnia to the screen, this time with the wonderful story of The Silver Chair.”

Nicole Brown will oversee the project for TriStar with Minghella, with Sara Smith overseeing the project for The Mark Gordon Company. TriStar has the Ang Lee-directed Billy Lynn coming up next.

Given the plot of The Silver Chair, the fourth book in the series, which takes places decades in future from where we last saw our heroes in 2010’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I also asked if we would see any of the original cast reprising their roles in the new film. The answer is a hard no.