By Mark Caro,Chicago Tribune

Until recently if you saw “churches” and “Disney” in the same sentence, you might expect the word “protest” to be lurking somewhere in between. But now Disney, which has run afoul of certain evangelical groups in the past, is wooing those same people in an attempt to create a film franchise the magnitude of “The Lord of the Rings” crossed with “The Passion of the Christ.”

For this equation to work for “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” however, Disney won’t be the only party stretching its boundaries. It’s one thing for a disenfranchised church-going audience to flock to an overtly religious statement such as Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” It’s quite another for them to embrace something they’ve traditionally shunned: a Hollywood fantasy.

“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” which Disney will release nationwide Friday, is the first feature-film adaptation of the late British author C.S. Lewis’ beloved, immensely popular seven-book “Narnia” series. A tale of four siblings who discover a wondrous land through the back of a wardrobe – and become entangled in a classic tale of good vs. evil amid talking animals and other magical creatures – “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” has been a favorite of young readers since its 1950 publication.

Many of these readers have enjoyed this story and subsequent books as pure imagination-tickling fantasy. But the faith community also long has embraced “Narnia” and its author, considered an important religious writer for books such as “Mere Christianity,” an argument for orthodox Christianity. They don’t have to squint too hard to see the parallels between Jesus Christ and “Narnia” hero Aslan, the majestic lion who sacrifices himself for humans’ salvation.

So the movie, directed by “Shrek” co-director Andrew Adamson and starring Tilda Swinton as the White Witch and Liam Neeson as the voice of Aslan, offers Disney a rare opportunity to reach two massive audiences: the young, fantasy-oriented moviegoers who turned the Harry Potter series and “The Lord of the Rings” into lucrative franchises and the often-movie-averse Christian population that propelled “The Passion of the Christ” to unprecedented box-office heights.

Disney thus has been attempting a tricky dance that involves assuring Christian higher-ups that “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” stays true to Lewis’ Christian roots while telling everyone else that the movie has mass, secular appeal.

“We want every fan, regardless of how you’re a fan, to come to the movie,” said Dennis Rice, Disney’s senior vice president of publicity. “The most important thing I’d like to stress is we are not going after any fan base at the expense of any other.”

Disney even has released two “Narnia” soundtracks, one featuring the film’s score, the other a compilation of Christian rockers offering “Music Inspired by the Chronicles of Narnia.”

David Miller, entertainment analyst for the Los Angeles-based Sanders Morris Harris Group, estimated that Disney is spending about $180 million on “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”: $100 million on the film, $80 million on marketing. “This is a series of books just like “Lord of the Rings’ that has universal appeal in languages all over the world, so it seems like a bet worth taking,” he said. “But it’s an expensive bet.”

Rice said the “grassroots” outreach to Christian groups has gobbled up less than 5 percent of the movie’s marketing budget, yet this campaign has been far-reaching nonetheless.

In fact, one striking difference between the campaigns for “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and “The Passion” is that Gibson was screening his film to fellow religious travelers for months before it opened. The first time anyone saw “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” in its final version was at a press junket two weekends ago in New York.

Another key difference is the movies themselves. “The Passion” is a graphically violent account of Jesus’ final hours. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” is a family-friendly fantasy that can be read as a parable about Christ’s love.

Still, the new movie’s investors can only hope “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” connects as effectively as “The Passion of the Christ,” which grossed a whopping $371 million domestically and another $241 million overseas. “I think “The Passion of the Christ’ is definitely a watershed moment in the movie business,” Rice said.

Yet many pastors now say that churchgoers did more for “The Passion” than “The Passion” did for churches. For all of the “Passion” tie-in events, screenings and trinkets, church culture and membership didn’t necessarily change.

Meanwhile, Disney’s efforts at good faith, so to speak, already have paid off with parts of the Christian community. Late this summer the American Family Association ended its nine-year Disney boycott, in part because of the studio’s involvement with “Narnia.” The AFA, along with other groups on the religious right, had been protesting Disney for gay-oriented events at its theme parks (which haven’t disappeared) as well as its ownership of Miramax, which released such iconoclastic fare as “Priest” and “Bad Santa” before the founding Weinstein brothers departed in September.

“We felt like Disney was being more responsive to the Christian community with a movie like this and also the fact that (former Disney CEO) Michael Eisner was gone and they got rid of Miramax,” AFA President Tim Wildmon said, adding that Disney is currently working with AFA’s media division to promote “Narnia” on the group’s 180 radio stations.

The question now is whether Disney can have and eat its secular and religious cakes. In a cultural climate that pits “red” vs. “blue” states, conservatives vs. liberals and the religious vs. the secular, one group’s embrace of a movie might reflexively trigger an opposite reaction from another.

“When they’re marketing it to the church, they’re saying, “This is an opportunity to take the Christian message to a broader culture,”‘ said Seattle-based faith and culture commentator Dick Staub, author of “Christian Wisdom of the Jedi Masters.” “And so it feels to the broader culture a bit like a Trojan horse.”

But entertainment analyst Miller said he doesn’t expect Disney’s Christian outreach to scare off non-religious moviegoers, noting, “I think there will be a number of different constituencies who go to see the film for different reasons.”

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