Things looked bleak for the Chronicles of Narnia franchise when third film The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was put in turnaround by Disney, the studio that released the first two instalments. But now things are moving ahead once more: 20th Century Fox picked up the film, and a new writer in the shape of Michael Petroni has been hired to redraft the script.
Petroni previously wrote The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys and, er, Queen of the Damned, but has been keeping busy recently with rewrite work on Fox 2000 films like Afterlife, The Book Thief and Julia Roberts film Daniel Isn't Talking. He takes over from Richard LaGravanese, who did the most recent draft of the Narnia script.
The story sees the two younger Pevensie children, Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley) return to Narnia, along with their no-good cousin Eustace, to find Prince Caspian about to embark on a sea journey across the great ocean aboard the eponymous Dawn Treader. Adventure (and dragons!) follows.
The film's due to go into production this summer, for release over Christmas 2010.