Last we heard about The Chronicles of Narnia was in June of last year when Life of Pi and Finding Neverland scribe David Magee sent out a tweet to his private Twitter account saying that he completed a first draft of The Silver Chair after spending more than a year working on the project. It was an unofficial update, but a welcome one for fans of a franchise that seemingly expired quietly without a trace. Today, I’m happy to bring an official update on the progress of the film via producer Mark Gordon, who says Narnia is not only very much still alive, it’s experiencing a bit of a rebirth.

Gordon was on hand at the TCA winter press tour in anticipation his new CBS series Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, and I took the opportunity to inquire about the status of the next Narnia sequel. Gordon confirmed that they’re in active development, and hoping to move into production in the near future.

We’re hoping to be able to make the movie very shortly. We’re very excited about it.

However, it seems that the next film won’t be a sequel at all, but the start of a new franchise entirely. Given the plot of The Silver Chair, the fourth book in the series, which takes places decades in future from where we last saw our heroes in 2010’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I also asked if we would see any of the original cast reprising their roles in the new film. The answer is a hard no.

No, it’s all going to be a brand new franchise. All original. All original characters, different directors, and an entire new team that this is coming from.

If the phrase “original characters” causes your hair to bristle, don’t worry, I asked him to clarify if these were entirely new character creations or existing characters in the Narnia mythology that have yet to get the movie treatment, and he confirmed the later. The new characters will come “from the world” of Narnia.