A couple of years ago, Scholastic published a new book from children’s author Tony Abbott called Kringle that basically asked the question “Wouldn’t the myth of Kris Kringle/Santa Claus be a lot more interesting if it were actually The Chronicles of Narnia with a few names and details changed?” And despite Narnia briefly touching on the character already, the answer from kids and parents appeared to be “Yes, indeed.” Thus, Kris became a young boy in an enchanted land beset upon by dark Goblin armies. He has to work with magical elves and other mythical figures to band the oppressed people together, and then there’s a large-scale battle with creatures facing off as he fulfills his destiny of sacrifice and…you get the idea.

Now, Paramount, along with producer Lorenzo DiBonaventura, have optioned the book for a feature film. Mark Dindal, the director of Chicken Little, is attached to helm it, but this is a live-action story, not a CGI one.

I’ll be interested to see how this newly-resurgent “family adventure” genre pans out in the coming years. Sure Narnia was a great success, and Eragon eventually reached profitability thanks to a healthy foreign take. But the soft domestic showing of Eragon and non-presence of Bridge To Terabithia make it clear that these films are hardly automatic licenses to print money, and we have yet to see a really good one. I want these types of films to take off because there does need to be more fantasy material for kids to get into. But the quality just ain’t there as of yet.