Nearly a decade after Disney’s last Chronicles of Narnia film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the expansive fantasy universe created by C.S. Lewis is coming back to the big screen via Netflix and Barbie director Greta Gerwig.
Given that the Mouse House already adapted the first three novels, Gerwig—who serves as both writer and director—is going in a different direction by tackling The Magician’s Nephew.
Published in 1955, it’s actually a prequel to the main series, explaining how Narnia was created by talking lion and Jesus allegory Aslan (voiced in the upcoming film by three-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep).
“I wanted a rock opera,” Gerwig told Empire magazine of her vision for the project. “I wanted it to be big and transporting.”
The Oscar-nominated filmmaker went on to cite the music of David Bowie, Paul McCartney, David Gilmour, Pete Townshend and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Robert Plant as inspiration.
“When I heard their music,” she explained, “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.”
The human players are youngster duo Digory Kirke (David McKenna) and his neighbor Polly Plummer (Beatrice Campbell), who find themselves swept into a world of magic through the experiments of Digory’s uncle, Andrew Ketterley (Daniel Craig).
Gerwig bluntly described Andrew as “the stupidest magician in the world who actually made magic.”
The Magician’s Nephew also provides an origin for Aslan’s beef with Jadis, a.k.a. the evil White Witch (Emma Mackey). In adapting the book, Gerwig slightly updated the material, swapping the early 1900s setting for the backdrop of post-World War II Britain.
“There’s this great line in the script where she’s described as ‘all chaos and bad plans,’” said Mackey. “She’s this larger-than-life creature who appears in Digory and Polly’s world and takes them by surprise.”
Carey Mulligan (The Ballad of Wallis Island), Ciarán Hinds (Munich), Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (The Sheep Detectives), Denise Gough (Andor) and Susan Wokoma (Cheaters) round out the cast.
When Does Greta Gerwig’s Chronicles of Narnia Movie Come Out?
The Magician’s Nephew arrives exclusively in theaters Feb. 12, 2027 ahead of its Netflix streaming debut April 2.
Gerwig is a producer on the movie with Mark Gordon, Amy Pascal and Vincent Sieber-Smith. Patricia Whitcher, Douglas Gresham and Melvin Adams are executive producers. Christine Crais is co-producer.
