A deep and dark closet. Four children. A game of hide-and-seek. Put all of these ingredients together, and you have the beginnings of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the beloved children’s classic by British author C. S. Lewis.

Now, more than 50 years after its publication, the fantasy adventure tale has finally made its way to the big screen. The much-awaited movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe opened on Friday, December 9, amidst roars and flurries of excitement in book and movie circles alike.

Filmed in New Zealand, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (LWW) is an epic adventure about the battle between good and bad. It starts out with a simple game of hide-and-seek and culminates on a battleground in the magical world of Narnia—a land of perpetual winter where talking animals, centaurs, giants, dwarves, and a giant, noble lion, Aslan are all engaged in a battle against an evil White Witch named Jadis. Tumbling out of the back wall of a magical wardrobe arrive the Pevensie siblings—Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. These children are the ones whom a prophecy predicts will rescue Narnia from its nival spell.

If you’ve read C. S. Lewis’s book, you already know the outcome of the Pevensie’s adventure. If not, now’s the time to join the other 85,000,000 people who have read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in 29 languages since its 1950 publication. After all, this is a book that J. K. Rowling says inspired her to write the Harry Potter series!

Produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is directed by Adam Adamson, who also brought us the Shrek movies.

Adamson remembers reading all seven books when he was eight-years old. “I just read them over and over,” he said. “I basically existed in this world of Narnia for a time. I remember it as this huge, vivid story with a massive battle between good and evil and a whole menagerie of mythological creatures—and I wanted the chance to bring that world to the screen.”

Read my brief Q&A interviews with William Moseley and James McAvoy, who play Peter (the oldest brother) and Mr. Tumnus (Lucy's fawn friend) in the movie.