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

Certainly the world of pop culture is awash in Christ allegories, including some of my faves, like "RoboCop." To be clear, I didn't avoid these books *because* they were infused with Christianity, and in fact don't think I actively avoided them at all, just never read them. But one of the things I knew about them was that they *were* infused with Christianity, and that it was a big part of CS Lewis's life. I suppose somewhere in the back of my mind as a non-Christian I've always been a little wary of capital-C Christians*, especially those in the more modern era (and not, say, Milton or Dante, who were not exactly analogous to Graham Greene) but I've never heard anything problematic about CS Lewis himself, his beliefs or his books.

*which is partly why I've listened to plenty of U2 but not Jars of Clay (lol) and other bands that explicitly identify as "Christian."

Bottom line is:

If you don't want to read a fantasy series that prominently, and immediately, features Santa Claus and a messianic character who is crucified and then resurrected a la JC then don't read CS Lewis

And if you don't want to read a fantasy series that descends (in vol 5 and 7) into some pretty-scandalous racism and sexism, including "that moment"* that is absolutely stomach churning, then don't read CS Lewis

*lipstick and party invitations ftw

in CS Lewis's case it's not just allusions or being inspired by - he was a theologist and a christian apologist, and his works very much reflect that. but you can certainly read Narnia as adventure / fairy tale books! i did. and Narnia is much less xtian than, say, The Space Trilogy.

And ya there is absolutely no argument for "chronological" over "narrative" order of books, it's just such a wrong headed argument, you'd have an easier time arguing "trickle down capitalism" afaic

It doesn't aid anyone's case, also, that TMN (vol 6, that is) is easily the most boring book in the series

An interesting thing about The Last Battle is that it has always been my favourite volume, like by a long shot. Despite the insane shift in tone and the puzzle of the overt Bible-thumping, it's extremely suspenseful and tightly-wound narratively and I remember finding it thrilling

I need to re-read The Screwtape Letters as an adult but wow what a book, iirc

it's a personal tic, like "I don't care for hi-hat"

I am also extremely picky about hi-hats.

xp i've got the book and been meaning to read it for years, i need to do that (and the essays and The Great Divorce)

Heh, I have no idea why but for a second there I was mixing up "The Screwtape Letters" with Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape."

I'm also picky about hi-hats. Sometimes I love them, but then sometimes I hear tracks where they are mixed so low that I can barely hear them, and don't miss them. (I've noticed a lot more people playing 15" hats these days, too.)

My mother read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe enthusiastically to us because it was an obvious Jesus analogy and then couldn't really see that there would be anything else in the rest of the books, though that possibly says more about the paucity of biblical knowledge in mid-century Irish Catholics.

There's a website, because of course there is, about how the Narnia books are tools of Satan because there's satyrs and talking animals etc in them: http://www.homemakerscorner.com/cslewis.htm

I think I heard about it when Freaky Trigger had their Narnia Week, way back when. Tom Ewing had an article that talks to some of the topic above - I'll quote it below but the comments are also worth reading: https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2011/01/narnia-week-yours-is-a-younger-world

(or just search for Narnia on FT, they're all good to great I think)

I do prefer The Last Battle I think, because the stuff that's put into the mixer is wilder and weirder than the others - but it's been a few decades, I should reread them.

My favourite part of any subcreation is its edges – apocrypha, marginalia, the sketches and hints at grander unrealised designs. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth is detail-rich (to say the least) but I’d linger fascinated on the Blue Wizards, or Rhun, or Far Harad: the stuff he left only as names. If anyone did fill them in I’d be mortified – this is one reason I won’t let my Doctor Who fandom take me as far as the novels, where mystery seems regularly to be given a thorough and pedantic kicking.

One of the funny things about these holes in a built world is that they work just as well – perhaps even better – if they arise from carelessness as if they’re planned. It’s a tightrope – revealing the mystery is bad, but knowing something was intended to work as a mystery can kill it for me just as surely. The Narnia series has a few of these – most of the close encounters with Aslan’s kingdom never impressed or moved me much as a kid because (I now suspect) there was too much narrative heavy-handedness around them.

But the series is also rich in moments where Lewis touches on a much vaster universe which seems all the stranger for being set against the slightly chintzy fairyland of Narnia. Tolkien apparently found fault with Lewis’ slapdash treatment of mythology in the stories but this is one of the series’ greatest assets. I read the books very young – there is a picture of me taken the summer Al was born, reading Prince Caspian; I would have been 4 and a half – and their sudden shifts in tone made pleasurable sense. Minotaurs on one page, Father Christmas on the next; jumping from the desolation of Charn to the violent slapstick of Andrew, Letty and Jadis in London.

The tedious modern reframing of Narnia-talk around the books’ Christian allegories tends to ignore this playfulness entirely. Almost alone among worldbuilders, Lewis is forever restlessly pushing at the boundaries of his own creation, and the more he does so the better the novels get. He’s impatient with Narnia itself. Pressed for a sequel to a hit children’s book, Lewis opens Prince Caspian by showing its world as a moss-covered ruin. Everyone the reader and human characters knew from that first story is dead: Lewis doesn’t make much of this fact but it’s there in the background. By his third book (publication order) he’s left Narnia behind and is sailing East. In the fourth he heads North (and Down), in the fifth South, in the sixth we hop worlds and end up at the beginning of time, and in the seventh we at last get a third whole book set in Narnia… only to see it destroyed. I don’t know how much this willingness to test his creation to destruction chimed with my tastes, and how much it shaped them.

come on, we all know The Police would be a footnote if it wasn't for the hi hats

Never thought about it, but a case can be made!

As Aslan told Peter, we are spirits in the material wprld.

xxxp thank you AF!

the books are all so distinctive, my faves have always been the later ones i.e. 3-7, the only tangentially related run from 4-6 is prob my overall pick

should've stuck to One World (Not Three)

Sting as Uncle Andrew, singing 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic' to Jadis in a musical adaptation

(why did Sting stop acting? he was pretty good)

counterpoint: he wasn't

extra counterpoint: he didn't

He was quite sexy in Stormy Monday though.

He smouldered well in that one.

I read the first three books recently and didn’t find the Christian stuff overwhelming in any way. (I grew up in a non-religious Jewish household and we loved the cartoon but assumed the book was propaganda). If anything, the allegorical stuff prevents them from feeling twee, or like showoffy worldbuilding exercises.

On the other hand I was pretty surprised about how much of them seem to directly reference fascism and military/ police states. I don’t know anything about Lewis so this could be totally off the mark, but they read to me aa quite strongly and respectably anti-fascist.

(They also seem exactly like d&d stories for kids - here’s your costumes, your armour, your weapons, your spells, and a map - get questing!)

otm

Iirc there are some direct transpositions of well-known Christian allegories throughout. Aslan taking credit for various providential life-saving moments in Shasta’s journey, def a “these were the times I carried you” moment. I remember even at age 7 or 8 feeling comforted (? or something) that Aslan recognized that the Tash-faithful Calormene who sacrificed himself to his deity would end up in Aslan’s country in the afterlife, something something about “this act was in fact in the service of Aslan”. What is that? What brand of Christianity? Prob rushomancy has the right answer here

Not a contradiction, but the books are older than that lousy footprints poem, which only started popping up in the 1960s.

Now that I think about it, it's possible that the later books passed my mother by because they were establishing more granular distinctions of "no he's this kind of Jesus"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3fAcxcxoZ8

"That lousy footprints poem" I was delighted to read this haha

The bit in The Magician's Nephew that tears me up is when Aslan chokes up after Diggory's request to help his mom.

they're the only ones in this new world who know about suffering, etc.

I recently listened to them in the chronological order of the story, starting with The Magician's Nephew. It is fantastic series of books

HarperCollins, at the suggestion of Lewis's stepson, opted to use the series' internal chronological order when they won the rights to it in 1994. The narrators are Kenneth Branagh, Jeremy Northam, Patrick Stewart, Alex Jennings, Michael York, Lynn Redgrave, and Derek Jacobi

It is pretty great

savages ;)