In her Woman of the Year profile for Time Magazine, Barbie director Greta Gerwig is letting a few new details slip on her upcoming adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia fantasy series for Netflix.
Gerwig has signed on to helm a minimum of two films, though it's unclear just how many of Lewis' Narnia works (there were seven in total) will be covered.
Gerwig wrote a draft of the Narnia film before ever setting set foot on the Barbie set. Her plans was to immediately follow up her work on the billion dollar grossing movie by jumping into the Netflix adaptation.
"Knowing that I’d laid the groundwork for Narnia and wanted to return to it—that’s probably something I set up for myself psychologically. Because I know the right thing, for me anyway, is to keep making movies. Whatever happens, good or bad, you’ve got to keep going," said Gerwig.
Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s CEO teased, "It won’t be counter to how the audience may have imagined those worlds but it will be bigger and bolder than they thought." He went on to add that the adaptation will be, "rooted in faith."
Briefly jumping into her views on the texts, Gerwig disclosed, "It’s connected to the folklore and fairy stories of England, but it’s a combination of different traditions,” she says.“As a child, you accept the whole thing—that you’re in this land of Narnia, there’s fauns, and then Father Christmas shows up. It doesn’t even occur to you that it’s not schematic. I’m interested in embracing the paradox of the worlds that Lewis created, because that’s what’s so compelling about them."
In a previous interview, Gerwig disclosed, "I’m slightly in the place of terror because I really do have such reverence for Narnia. I loved Narnia so much as a child. As an adult, C.S. Lewis is a thinker and a writer. I’m intimidated by doing this. It’s something that feels like a worthy thing to be intimidated by.”
“As a non-British person, I feel a particular sense of wanting to do it correctly… it’s like when Americans do Shakespeare, there’s a slight feeling of reverence and as if maybe we should treat it with extra care. It is not our countryman.”
Last year, Stuber stated that the streamer would like to release the first film sometime in 2024, if Gerwig can crack the script in time but that's looking less likely with each passing day.
With a production budget of $180 million, Disney's live-action 2005 adaptation was a box office success, grossing $745 million worldwide. However, the studio witnessed declining profits on the next two entries.
Despite low box office returns, a film adaptation of the fourth book, The Silver Chair, was also in the works before Netflix intervened with plans to reboot the well-liked children's fantasy books.