The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was a proposed film version of C. S. Lewis' classic book. Option rights to the story were granted to Paramount in 1993, with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall as executive producers. In 1996, director John Boorman was in charge of the project, and had hired Jim Henson's Creature Shop to helm the pre-production design phase. Under the supervision of Neal Scanlan, and working closely with Boorman and his art team, the Creature Shop designed a puppet model of Aslan, the regal lion, which stood five feet at the shoulders. The team also built a pair of beavers, designed to "look like a retired schoolmaster and his wife," costumes for Fenris (a half-man, half-wolf character), and fauns.

In addition to the physical characters, the Creature Shop planned to create the film's centaurs through CGI, under the supervision of Hal Bertram. A mechanical rig, similar to that used on Mary Reilly, was created, to reproduce the movement of a real horse, located at a Bristol veterinary school, with additional input from circus horses. The centaur's human half was taken from motion-capture of Mike Lewis (aka Saracen), a star of the UK series Gladiators (the British equivalent of American Gladiators).

After several months of work, the film was put on hold, and the creatures went into storage. Later, Disney veteran Rob Minkoff was assigned to the project, and a new writing team was found. Ultimately, Paramount's option on the film lapsed, and in 2000, the C. S. Lewis Company partnered with Walden Media. A film version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe finally hit theaters in 2005, distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, but with no Creature Shop involvement.