Greta Gerwig is following Barbie, a $1.4 billion hit, with Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, her take on author C.S. Lewis' first chapter in The Chronicles of Narnia.
While the story has been moved to the 1950s, it sounds like the movie will remain true to what Lewis put on the page in 1955. That started with casting Aslan, who we now have a first look at, along with Emma Mackey's take on the White Witch.
Talking about why she chose Meryl Streep to lend her voice to Aslan, Gerwig told Empire, "I wanted someone who was profound but not pretentious, who had gravitas but not morose self-seriousness. Someone who could communicate depth and pathos as well as joy and delight."
She continued, "I wanted someone who was older than 70, so there was a wisdom of experience, but who also had the capacity of fresh wonder, like a child. And also to be one of the greatest actors to ever do it. That list is not a long one."
However, just like Gerwig reimagined the world of Barbie, her approach to Narnia is just as radical. "I wanted a rock opera," she teased. "I wanted it to be big and transporting. 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."
It turns out that inspired the filmmaker to shift the story from the early 1900s to a post-war 1950s Britain. That gave the story's young leads, Digory (David McKenna) and Polly (Beatrice Campbell), a new outlook that better fitted how Gerwig imagined this world.
"They had this relationship to pain and loss and something as unpromising as a bomb site, and they made a castle," she enthused. "They made a universe. They made something you could live inside of. I don’t know how you went from David Jones to David Bowie unless you went to Narnia and you saw something."
In The Magician's Nephew, the touch of a magical ring sends two friends hurtling into another world. They accidentally release an evil sorceress from her enchanted sleep. Hungry for ultimate power, she’s determined to destroy everyone—and every world—in her path. But a song from the Great Lion, Aslan, awakens a new hope and a new world: Narnia, where anything is possible.
The movie stars David McKenna, Beatrice Campbell, Emma Mackey, Carey Mulligan, Ciarán Hinds, Daniel Craig, and Meryl Streep. It was recently confirmed that, following IMAX previews on February 10, 2027, Narnia: The Magician's Nephew will be released theatrically on February 12, before streaming on Netflix on April 2.