"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is a beloved children's book about four British schoolchildren who pass through a wardrobe into a magic land where a witch has made it always winter and never Christmas. There they meet Aslan, the lion of the title, who offers his own life to the witch to atone for the treachery of one of the siblings.

Today, a $150 million movie version will open nationwide, reigniting an old debate: Is the world created by British author C.S. Lewis a rip-roaring piece of fantasy or a fairy tale suffused with Christian imagery? The answer is both, and that raises a related question: Can Disney succeed by selling the movie on two tracks — as a sort of cross between "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Passion of the Christ"? If so, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" figures to be a holiday blockbuster.

Walden Media made the movie, and Disney came in as a partner to distribute and sell it. A multitiered marketing campaign targets, among others, fantasy fans and churchgoers, groups not usually known for being on the same cultural wavelength.

"My reading of the situation is Disney came to realize, 'Goodness, we have a twofer here,' " says Alan Jacobs, a professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois. "We can draw in those millions of people who want heroic fantasy, but then we can also tap into those thousands of churches that can sell out theaters."

Since "Wardrobe" was published in 1950, the cycle of seven Narnia books has reached almost 100 million in sales.

"I don't want to sound greedy or sound like a producer saying, 'We're for everybody,' " producer Mark Johnson says. "But we are. That's the genius of C.S. Lewis: The story works on so many levels."

Lewis was an Oxford professor and prolific author best known in his lifetime for his literate defenses of Christian doctrine. But it is his Narnia novels that have earned him his most lasting fame — and the cinematic promise of as many as six sequels if "Wardrobe" is a hit.

The book has long charmed children of any or no religion. The movie is, in many ways, faithful to the book — and faithful to the faithful — without sounding the horn of religious orthodoxy. Johnson says you will find Christian symbolism in the movie only if you found it in the book.

Aslan, a sort of Lion King of Kings, is not a mere Christ figure. He is Christ. Lewis said so, calling Aslan a "supposal" of what might have happened if the Lion of Judah had come to another world. Just don't tell the kids, Lewis scholars say.

BETWEEN THE LINES

"Let story be story. Don't go explaining it," says Peter J. Schakel, author of "The Way Into Narnia" and a professor of English at Hope College in Holland, Mich. "Don't ask kids ... 'Do you find something deeper here?' Let them discover it on their own, if they ever do."

Bruce Edwards, a professor of English at Ohio's Bowling Green University, says, "With Lewis, the story is the thing. You ought to read the lines first. Then you can read between them."

Many won't have a chance to see the movie before being told what the Lion is between the lines: Hundreds of churches across the country are urging their congregations to see it.

Most of the film's marketing budget — reputedly $80 million — has been spent on saturation TV ads, but lesser amounts have been spent on grass-roots marketing to schools, libraries and youth groups. Johnson says that just 5 percent was spent wooing churchgoers, but the press coverage has centered on faith-based marketing.

Motive Marketing, which promoted "The Passion of the Christ" to a $370.6 million box office take for 2004, is among the companies that have sold "Wardrobe" directly to churches as a sort of greatest children's story ever told, complete with Sunday-school lesson plans. That spadework almost certainly ensures a big opening weekend.

FAITH CAN BE FUN

Lewis, who died in 1963, gave the clearest explanation of the books and why he wrote them in an essay titled "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to Be Said."

"I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past certain inhibitions which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ?

"I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices, almost as if it were something medical.

"But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday-school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could."

Dragons of a different sort kept Hollywood for many years from making a full-scale film of "Wardrobe." Several major studios passed on the project for reasons such as cost, its British-ness and its Christian subtext.

Walden Media got an option to the rights from the Lewis estate in 2001, when the Hollywood rules were changing. "Harry Potter" showed that American kids could embrace British stars. "Lord of the Rings" proved the potency of fantasy films. And "Passion of the Christ" affirmed faith as big box office.

Walden Media is backed by Philip F. Anschutz, a billionaire social conservative who co-founded Qwest Communications. When Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's administration put "Wardrobe" on a state-sponsored reading list this year, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State protested. The Palm Beach Post noted that Anschutz contributes to Republicans.

Plans are afoot for "Prince Caspian," which will be the next Narnia movie if "Wardrobe" succeeds.

Bowling Green's Edwards, author of "Not-a-Tame Lion," wishes moviegoers could see the film as the books' original readers read them, with no prompting from marketers or preachers. "This movie deserves an audience that has an ability to have the characters and the themes sneak up on them — or, as in Lewis' phrase, sneak past their watchful dragons," he says. "The dragons are way too watchful on this one."

Andrew Adamson, the film's director, seconds that emotion. He read the books as a child in New Zealand and received no instruction on deeper meaning.

"I read the books before I even knew what allegory meant, and I enjoyed them purely as an adventure," he says. "That's how the film should be able to be enjoyed, too."