Teaser Released For Greta Gerwig’s Narnia Movie

While Warner Bros tries to get Greta Gerwig to commit to a Barbie 2 before it’s too late, the successful director is spending her time in a different fantasy world, not one of dolls but lions. After acquiring the rights to CS Lewis’s Narnia books years ago, Netflix is putting out the first movie adaption in a long time…Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, with Gerwig in the director’s chair. Rather than make yet another film about witches and wardrobes, she’s picked a book in the series that has never been adapted before…and that’s just the beginning.

Actually it’s literally the beginning. Though The Magician’s Nephew was the sixth book, it’s also a prequel that told the story of how all the major characters came to be. There might be some differences though…the story, at least on the human realm’s side, will take place in the 1950s, whereas the book set its time frame in the 1900s.

Why the 1950s? It’s the birth of British rock and roll and Gerwig loves the stuff. “David Bowie saved my life,” Gerwig said to the magazine Empire. “Paul McCartney saved my life. David Gilmour saved my life. Pete Townshend saved my life. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant… When I heard their music, I had this deep sense of [thinking], ‘You’re gonna be okay.’ Narnia is literally a world made out of music. It is a world sung to life by Aslan, and rock ’n’ roll to me felt like a world made out of music.” These comments led some to assume she was making a Narnia rock opera…which WE would pay a ticket for, but others didn’t find to their taste.

It’s not true…The Magician’s Nephew is not a musical of any kind. But it will star Digory Kirke (David McKenna) and Polly Plummer (Beatrice Campbell) as the kids who find Narnia in this tale, as well as Emma Mackey as Jadis and Meryl Streep as the voice of Aslan. Other cast members include Carey Mulligan, Susan Wokoma and Denise Gough.

The Magician’s Nephew will be one of the first Netflix movies to headline their new pivot to theaters, which is quite the 180 considering how anti-theater they’ve publicly been over the last few years. It will debut in regular cinemas and IMAX on February 12, 2027, followed by its proper streaming premiere on April 2.