Over his more than four decades as a producer, Mark Johnson has done about 60 movies, including The Chronicles Of Narnia fantasy trilogy; Best Picture Oscar winner Rain Man; Bugsy; Good Morning, Vietnam; Galaxy Quest; The Holdovers; and romantic classic The Notebook. Surprisingly, none have been turned into a TV series yet, even as Johnson has established a footprint in television with the Emmy-winning Breaking Bad and most recently the Anne Rice universe on AMC.
That may finally change. During an interview with Deadline tied to Johnson’s first-look extension at AMC, he provided an update on the long-in-the-works TV series based on the cult classic 1999 sci-fi comedy Galaxy Quest. There had been multiple incarnations of a TV adaptation at the now-defunct Paramount TV Studios over the past decade, the most recent set up at Paramount+ in 2023.
Johnson addressed that project, now set up at CBS Studios, which absorbed sibling Paramount TV Studios, as well as a TV series adaptation of the 2023 boarding school Focus Features comedy-drama The Holdovers, which won Da ‘Vine Joy Randolph an Oscar and earned Johnson another Best Picture nomination.
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“Both are being written, so we’ll see,” he said.
The Holdovers has been in talks at Universal Television but there is no deal in place, sources said.
There are no current TV series plans for The Notebook, based on the Nicholas Sparks novel, which was recently adapted into a short-lived Broadway musical. But things are brewing around another movie title, the 2022 supernatural horror thriller What Lies Beneath, which Johnson executive produced.
“We’re very excited about the idea of maybe doing a television show — I’m not sure I should say this but I’m going to — our movie What Lies Beneath, that could lend itself to a very good, perhaps limited, perhaps not, TV show.”
Johnson also weighed in on C.S. Lewis’ bestselling The Chronicles of Narnia novels getting a new movie adaptation, this time by Barbie filmmaker Greta Gerwig for Netflix.
“I’m fascinated. First of all, I’m a gigantic fan of hers, so I can’t wait to see it,” he said. “I can’t quite tell what she’s doing. Is she doing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which, of course, we did years ago, or is she doing something else. Or is it a combination of them.”
No details about Gerwig’s movie are being released but it is believed to be an adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew, the sixth novel in the series, which serves as a prequel and examines the origins of Narnia.
Cast so far are Carey Mulligan, who will play the mother of Digory, one of the film’s young protagonists, Daniel Craig as Digory’s uncle, Meryl Streep as lion Aslan the Great, and Emma Mackey as the White Witch.
“I don’t know how secret it all is, I don’t know about it, but I’m not competitive about it,” Johnson said. “I can’t wait to see it, because whatever [Gerwig] does is going to be really good, and I’m sure, radically different from what we did.”
The Chronicles of Narnia trilogy, which he produced, consisted of adaptations of the first three books in the series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The first two films were directed by Andrew Adamson and the third by Michael Apted. They grossed $1.5B collectively worldwide.
The new movie is not following into its predecessors’ theatrical footsteps as it is Netflix-bound, but Gerwig secured a two-week IMAX run before the film drops on streaming, something Johnson gave her props for.