Netflix Puts Greta Gerwig's Narnia in Cinemas First

"Have you ever seen a world born?" a voice asks near the end of the first trailer for Narnia: The Magician's Nephew. Then the lion Aslan roars, and color spreads across the screen. Greta Gerwig, who wrote and directed the film for Netflix, showed the trailer on October 13 on an IMAX screen in New York, in a talk with Stephen Colbert. It went online the same day, together with two short films about how the movie was made.

It is her first film since Barbie, and the AP describes the new one as an IMAX-sized spectacle made for Netflix but designed for the big screen. The show took place at the AMC Lincoln Center cinema.

Music that is rarely lent out

The trailer opens with the slow guitar of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven, a song the band seldom licenses. Gerwig says she met Robert Plant and Jimmy Page to ask for it. In her words, they agreed because they saw the heart in the story, and because both love the books of C.S. Lewis. She picked the song because it feels epic and like a spiritual journey.

A story older than the wardrobe

Most people meet Narnia through a wardrobe. This film starts earlier. The Magician's Nephew was published in 1955 as the sixth book, and it tells how Narnia came to exist. Gerwig says Lewis himself suggested that readers begin with it.

In the book, two children in London in 1900 travel to another world with a magic ring. The trailer moves the story to a London damaged by wartime bombing. The children suspect their neighbor, Uncle Andrew, of being a magician, and when one of them puts on a yellow ring, objects begin to float. The trailer then flashes through a green wood that links the worlds, a White Witch in the snow and a villain in a disco-style dress in front of a glowing red set. According to The A.V. Club, it begins with a carved wardrobe and an apple tree, a nod to the 2005 film.

Newcomers David McKenna and Beatrice Campbell play the children. Daniel Craig is Uncle Andrew and Emma Mackey is the White Witch. Carey Mulligan and Ciarán Hinds are also in the cast. Meryl Streep voices Aslan, who roars but never speaks. In the last moments the colors of the newborn land spread to the edges of the screen, and then the title appears.

Made by hand

The two short films stress how much of the film was built for real. One shows sets on a large scale, including a London location with a view of Tower Bridge. The other follows the people who make the sets and costumes. The A.V. Club reads this as a film that leans on handmade work.

Gerwig is 43, and the books clearly matter to her. She says she read and reread them, ate plenty of Turkish delight along the way and copied out lines that moved her. In her words, she would not be who she is without these books.

A streaming company asks for a bigger screen

The unusual part is where Netflix wants people to see it. Netflix bought the worldwide rights to the Chronicles of Narnia in 2018. The three earlier films were made by Walden Media.

By Gerwig's account, she wrote a first draft in 2020 and 2021, after telling Netflix chief executive Ted Sarandos at a party that she only knew how to make films for the big screen. He told her to make it for the biggest screen she could imagine. The film was first meant to arrive in November 2026. Netflix moved it to 2027 so it could open in cinemas around the world.

It opens in cinemas on February 12 and reaches Netflix on April 2. The A.V. Club reports that the cinema run will last 50 days, the longest Netflix has given any film. The AP reports that the film cost $280 million, which makes it one of the most ambitious projects Netflix has taken on.

Only a first look

So far everything comes from the filmmakers and the studio, and the footage is a trailer, not a finished film. It does show a clear choice of style: a rock anthem, handmade sets and a prequel that goes back to the very start. Whether that suits Narnia will be answered in cinemas in February.

This article was written by artificial intelligence and may contain mistakes.