Greta Gerwig's Narnia movie

Going big:

According to Puck News, Gerwig’s Narnia movie “will hit about 1,000 IMAX screens worldwide on Thanksgiving Day 2026 and will not appear on Netflix until Christmas,” with a two-week IMAX run guaranteed and an option to add a third if there’s enough audience interest. Also, “there’s a chance” Narnia might also play in some non-IMAX theaters ahead of its streaming debut. In addition, “Netflix has committed to market the IMAX release like a typical theatrical tentpole movie and identify Narnia as a ‘Netflix/IMAX’ title from the outset.”

Adam Driver as Puddleglum

I love this model tbh

I just want to know if she's starting with The Magician's Nephew, like she obviously should, or just starting with LW&W like I am dreading.

huh

Re-sequencing the novels 25 years ago in chronological order was a terrible decision.

think we have discussed this at length elsewhere

The small thrill of learning six novels in that the Empress Jadis was the White Witch.

Anyway.

We already had Tilda as the White Witch -- go with Cate I guess?

Alfred otm xp

We already had Tilda as the White Witch -- go with Cate I guess?

― Ned Raggett, Friday, January 17, 2025

Rupert Everett or go home

there's so much in LW&W that lends itself towards the twee, like father Christmas turning up, and once you've set yourself tonally on that path it's hard to go back. also there are already 3-4 adaptations of LW&W, and none of TMN or TLB.

She's batting 1000%, I guess, but I have no idea what even the best version of this looks like.

I never saw the most recent adaptation of Lion, or the other two. They were pretty successful, weren't they? Do people/kids still watch them?

The first was successful in general, the following ones...not so much.

I just want to know if she's starting with The Magician's Nephew, like she obviously should, or just starting with LW&W like I am dreading.

Why on earth would she start with the sixth volume in the series?

Can't wait for the prequel series Charn.

I forgot I am in a minority of one on this! but I'm right, LW&W is a bore and TMN is brilliant and comes first.

TMN is by some distance the better novel, agreed.

He hadn't figured shit out the first time around.

I never saw the most recent adaptation of Lion, or the other two. They were pretty successful, weren't they? Do people/kids still watch them?

― Josh in Chicago,

The first one starring Tilda Swinton is pretty good even if Liam Neeson is closer to Father Christmas than Aslan. The little girl who plays Lucy is remarkable.

These books were read aloud to me by my mother when I was age 6-8, all of them. The effect of having Horse And His Boy’s first half take place in a mysterious land, at an unknown time in history, suddenly snap into focus as happening in King Peter’s reign was beyond-delightful, it was formative. The realization in TMN that Digory is none other than the Uncle Professor (from many volumes previous) was similarly relevatory. Denying children of these narrative delights is not just wrong, it’s blasphemous.

^^^ beautifully put

I was a freak for fantasy books as a child, and even then I got a weird Christian vibe from them and bailed on the first one.

I mean, aren't they pretty overtly Christian? I don't think I've ever read them.

we've discussed over and over again in the other Narnia threads. If reading Milton and Dante and Graham Greene bother you, skip Narnia.

I forgot I am in a minority of one on this! but I'm right, LW&W is a bore and TMN is brilliant and comes first.

If reading Milton and Dante and Graham Greene bother you, skip Narnia.

Yeah but those are cool and Narnia felt more like Jars of Clay :)

(sorry I know people like it, I'm out)

Aslan is Jesus, Peter is Cardinal Spellman, Narnia is Little Italy, and that's the extent of the allegory.

Aslan covers more ground than "Jesus" outside of LW&W. He is also the creator and ghostly and violent intervenor, which is still very christian but perhaps less Jars of Clay christian.

As a kid I didn't really notice how Christian it was because I was raised areligious. Starting with the Magician's Nephew is narratively stupid and treats kids like they're too stupid to understand a non-chronological storyline. None of the awesome big reveals in it land properly if you don't already know about Narnia from reading the previous five books!

And while yes, it being sixth in the series means it's unlikely to ever get made into a film, that also guarantees the mediocre Last Battle won't be either. Of course having Horse and His Boy being filmed third also presents problems with the age of the main actors... they can't go young-old-young, they need young-young-young (break for Silver Chair to age up a bit) and then older

respectowiggle

lol

I can think of a hundred franchises that need a reboot (or just a boot) more than C.S. Lewis, but have at it Greta

I’m waiting for Greta Gerwig’s Blue Adept movies

mumblecore fantasy would be cool, young adults trying to figure shit out while dragons and wizards fight in the background

That's just the fantasy version of Macross.

i'd much prefer greta's version of earthsea.

That would rule! But alas.

I remember reading this in the elementary school library around the same time I was repelled by Narnia, and it ruled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pit_Dragon_Chronicles#Dragon's_Blood_(1982)

the sequence of the novels is such a key part of the storytelling -- to begin with the Magician's Nephew is to miss the point of the Magician's Nephew in large part. It happens where it happens so that the reader can put the piece into place and understand. I do understand that that's asking a lot of readers 50+ years later but I'm of the opinion that if you're not up for being asked for some extra once in a while, you need to up your game as a reader.

we've discussed over and over again in the other Narnia threads. If reading Milton and Dante and Graham Greene bother you, skip Narnia.

also Alfred wildly otm. Mrs Noothgrush is put off by Xian stuff too, that's any reader's right but it's not a good criticism of a work, it's a personal tic, like "I don't care for hi-hat"

that's a bit like saying that criticizing lovecraft for racism is a "personal tic"

I’m waiting for Greta Gerwig’s Blue Adept movies

omg

xp new rule?

Christian overtones = racism?

lol that's not what i was saying at all.

I thought I had misunderstood you!

I can think of a hundred franchises that need a reboot (or just a boot) more than C.S. Lewis, but have at it Greta

I am still (even more so, now, following the destruction in Altadena) patiently awaiting for Garrett Bradley/A24 to finish their Parable Of The Sower adaptation

I reject this Narnia timeline revisionism, give me old school late reveals every time, fgti and JCLC otm

it's literally one of the best parts of the series! a reward for close readers.

xp what i meant is that xtianity permeats and informs narnia as much (or more) as racism does lovecraft's works, so you can't just treat it as a minor or unrelated detail

---

i'm curious what Greta thinks of The Problem With Susan

Well that's not the main Netflix embed.

ah okay

For the record the official upload has 305k views, in two hours. One of the comments is "please don't Marvel my Narnia".

Apt!

they wrecked a Wrinkle in Time the same way

Was encouraged by this being The Magician's Nephew (a novel I vastly prefer to TLtW&tW) but the trailer looks like expensive barf.

While Stairway being in the trailer does not necessarily mean it’s actually in the film, I have to respect Gerwig making one of her cinematic calling cards the rehabilitation of decidedly uncool songs, from “Crash Into Me” to “Closer to Fine” and now this

Feels weird for someone to refer to "Stairway to Heaven" as "decidedly uncool".

anybody on ILX calling a song “decidedly uncool” is indeed ironic

it's not like she used Hotel California

In the spirit of calling music other people like “decidedly uncool” I went and revived the my dick poll thread

(music doesn’t uncool. People are uncool)

This Avengers movie looks just as dog shit as all the others.

I don't have time to really think this out, but here's an observation that comes from a weekend conversation: many of my friends encountered the Narnia books at dusty public libraries, or in grandparents' studies, or tucked into small, embarrassed, often out-of-the way fantasy sections. the qualities of those spaces, antiquarian and furtive, infused the reading experience of the novels, and the metatextuality of the wood-between-worlds (silent portals to other places...) mirrored the qualities of the libraries/studies/bookstores themselves. the austerity of the magician's nephew, in particular, and the qualities of lewis's prose, in general, are at odds with contemporary 'event' moviemaking. no matter how the stories are dramatized, they're going to have to flesh out antique, elliptical, poetic writing . I want them filled with silence and stillness, and private discovery. It's how I first experienced Narnia. But that is itself a projection.

(I think the comparison to Wrinkle in Time is astute, although I have more faith in Gerwig than DuVerney, who I think was launched at Disney too early)

cmon folks i am not personally judging the coolness of any of those songs. But you don’t think Gerwig is playing with their reputations by leaning into them

What I read throughout this thread is that Narnia is too cool and nerdy to be made into cinema

That’s cool!

But like, don’t shit on people for trying

i think ppl are allowed to critique film

no

i agree with jared p. and soda, but evidently capitalism demands marvelization

also james bond as uncle andrew is pretty fuckin sweet

What slow, spooky version of a popular song will be in the trailer? Maybe Katy Perry's "Roar"?

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, May 1, 2026 5:50 AM (five months ago)

Still a chance if they do another trailer!

Anyway, about that song sync

https://consequence.net/2026/10/led-zeppelin-stairway-to-heaven-in-narnia-trailer/

rewatched Withnail and I awhile back and was marveling at the songs they were able to license for a fairly no-budget film... I guess Good Morning, Vietnam was around that same era, when classic artists were still probably pleased to get a thousand bucks or whatever

(if they still even owned the rights, I should add)

rewatched Withnail and I awhile back and was marveling at the songs they were able to license for a fairly no-budget film

Well when your film studio is run by George Harrison... (That explains the Beatles choice at least.)

I was unaware of the context for that Wayne's World bit

boy that trailer makes me kind of sad, i had some hope this was going to be something really unique like barbie, i don't know, i see that much CG shit now and i just sort of tune out :/

(This kind of makes me want to watch it, I had no interest before.)

looked more practical than I expected and I don’t expect the spectral lion made out of sparkles to be practical, etc

it would be very funny to make animal people not be cg and make adult humans wear animal onesies like the bbc series but I shudder to think ahout the furry community’s reaction

I wasn't particularly excited about Gerwig doing another IP adaptation, but this looks like it could be cool.

jaymc at 2:54 17 Sep 26

yeah never mind

I don’t exactly trust early trailers for stuff like this so I’m still down. the Led Zeppelin is a bit ok wut though

One thing the internet points out - and it might have been mentioned already in this thread - is that the action seems to have been updated from the turn of the century to the 1950s, which is curious because the kids in Lion, set twenty years hence, are evacuated at the outbreak of the Second World War, which is pretty crucial to the plot.

Assuming the sequels have the same relative timescale, it'll be interesting to see what the cast of this version of Lion will be evacuated from in twenty years' time.

My recollection is that a lot of lefties were disappointed with the outcome of the 1992 General Election, but not to the extent of evacuating their children to the countryside. Which in any case wouldn't have made sense because the countryside votes Tory. Evacuating inner-city children to Wiltshire and Dorset would not have saved them from John Major and Edwina Curry and the Cones Hotline.

the fact that they are evacuees is not really essential to the story, there aren't really parallels in Narnia.

My theory re what the Lion setting would involve is some sort of evacuation/isolation due to COVID. It would fit the time frame and Digory would be old enough to be an elderly professor type.

This looks like pure uncut slop. Here’s why that’s a smart choice

That's the fascinating thing. The internet is driven by two conflicting, contradictory impulses. On the one hand the great amorphous lefty hive mind of Reddit wants to love this film, because it's by their hero, Greta Gerwig. She can do no wrong. But on the other hand the looks awful.

So the internet doesn't know what to think. The stupid, stupid children of Reddit are waiting for someone else to voice an opinion, because like all children they're scared little wimps who are terrified of saying the wrong thing. This thread stood out:
https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1x5y7ch/whats_going_on_with_the_new_narnia_movie/

Their tiny little child-like left-wing minds don't know what to think. On the one hand they laugh at US Christians for complaining that Jesus Christ is being voiced by a woman - I think that was the studio's intention - but on the other hand they're not keen on the film itself. Presumably the studio cast Meryl Streep as Lion Jesus because they wanted some sweet, sweet Twitter backlash, thus allowing them to plant stories in the media about the religious right and trauma etc, but it hasn't worked, because Meryl Streep is a distinguished actor. They should have picked Sabrina Carpenter instead. That would have really riled up US Christians.

This is why lefties are so funny. Instead of having one, homogenous opinion, they have lots of different opinions, some of which conflict. That's no way to run a political party.

my challops: it looks fine, it's just the music in the trailer that makes it annoying.

again the idea that greta gerwig is a hero of the online left as if barbie wasnt neutral at best on a lot of the topics it was very definitely thumbing its nose at

If you thumb your nose at something, how can you be neutral?

at best!

I suppose what’s going through my head is “can’t the internet chill, it’s just a trailer”, but that’s about as pointless a thought as I’ve ever had.

I’m guessing there’s no AI involved, but it did have that weirdly sharp, glossy oversaturated look of a generated image. Eh. Ideally I’m just looking for a fun, not-too-traumautic movie I can take my 7 year old to, I don’t really care if it’s faithful to the book. As long as it doesn’t have any terrifying face-peeled Terminator robots like Hoppers did last year, I’m happy.

Stairway sounded great - maybe it’s finally stopped sounding like the overplayed cliche it was in the 80s and 90s? Of course it’s not a patch on the Dolly version.

i dont think its changed at all tbh

Stairway is still bad and will always be bad IMO

Reveal Your Uncool Liberal Beliefs Here

(Hoppers came out in March ftr)

I thought this was exactly as I expected from a beloved tale about posh children in 50s England having magical adventures and meeting quirky characters.

Not sure who was expecting Andor.

rewatched Withnail and I awhile back and was marveling at the songs they were able to license for a fairly no-budget film
Well when your film studio is run by George Harrison... (That explains the Beatles choice at least.)

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 14 October 2026 21:54 (five days ago)

I was unaware of the context for that Wayne's World bit

― L'enfer, c'est les otters (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 14 October 2026 22:05 (five days ago)

Scrolling back through this I assumed it was about Ralph Brown.

The article about Led Zep's forbearance would hit a little different if I hadn't just heard Black Dog all over The Wringing Dry of Cliff Boon.

(this all looks like a good movie to me)

So Uncle Andrew pops his head 'round the door, and mentions there's a little sweet shop on the edge of Charn...