Greta Gerwig doesn’t do things by halves. After decades spent honing her craft as an actor and writer, she directed an instant coming-of-age classic in Lady Bird, delivered a deeply passionate adaptation of Little Women – and then broke the box office with Barbie, turning a summer comedy about a legacy toy brand into an existential exploration of life, gender roles, and mothers and daughters. So, how do you even begin to follow that up? You tackle one of the most seismic fantasy sagas in literature – in true Greta Gerwig style, with no half-measures.
Make way, then, for Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew – a ground-up retelling of C. S. Lewis’ stories, starting not with the oft-adapted The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, but with his universe-hopping Narnia origin story instead. Both literally and metaphorically, Gerwig’s adaptation comes from the same mid-lockdown creative wellspring that birthed Barbie. “I had the same idea with Narnia,” she tells Empire of where her wild vision began. “I wanted a rock opera. I wanted it to be big and transporting.”
While not literally a rock opera (no, this is not a musical) the sheer creativity of British rock music from the ‘60s and ‘70s – the glam scene, the proggy wildness – all proved significant creative touchpoints for Gerwig’s The Magician’s Nephew. “David Bowie saved my life. Paul McCartney saved my life. David Gilmour saved my life. Pete Townshend saved my life. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant…” she reels off. “When I heard their music, I had this deep sense of [thinking], ‘You’re gonna be okay.’” These inspirations provided the bedrock for Gerwig’s interpretation. “Narnia is literally a world made out of music,” she explains. “It is a world sung to life by Aslan, and rock ’n’ roll to me felt like a world made out of music.”
In taking The Magician’s Nephew out of the early 1900s setting of the novel, and into post-war ‘50s Britain instead, young heroes Digory (David McKenna) and Polly (Beatrice Campbell) take on fresh resonance. After all, the kids of grey, muted 1950s Britain became the vibrant, ceaselessly imaginative ‘70s rock heroes that illuminated Gerwig’s world. “They had this relationship to pain and loss and something as unpromising as a bomb site, and they made a castle,” she marvels of that generation. “They made a universe. They made something you could live inside of.” Get ready for a transformative cinematic journey that only Greta Gerwig could make. “I don’t know how you went from David Jones to David Bowie unless you went to Narnia and you saw something,” she posits. Now, you’ll see it too.
Read Empire’s full world-exclusive Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew cover story – going on set with Greta Gerwig and her cast, including Daniel Craig, Emma Mackey, and Meryl Streep, to get the first word on her epic fantasy adaptation – in the November 2026 issue, on sale Thursday September 24. Pre-order a copy online here. Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew comes to cinemas from February 12, 2027, and comes to Netflix from April 2, 2027.
