Like a mystical realm that you can reach simply by putting on a magic ring, Greta Gerwig‘s next movie is closer than it seems. The popular director is following up her 2023 smash hit Barbie by adapting C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia books. The first film — based on the sixth novel, The Magician’s Nephew — is finally ready to tease what Gerwig has in store when the film opens in theaters on Feb. 12, 2027.
A few images from Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew have been released following an exclusive cover story in Empire magazine. Here’s what we know so far.
The Plot
Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia consists of seven books, starting with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. That book followed the the four Pevensie children traveling through the titular wardrobe to the snow-covered land of Narnia, where they helped the lion Aslan save the realm from the White Witch. Wardrobe has been adapted for the screen several times — twice for TV, and then again as a blockbuster live-action film in 2005. That film was successful enough to spawn two sequels, which adapted subsequent Lewis’s subsequent Narnia books, Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, to diminishing results.
The Magician’s Nephew, though, has never been adapted for screen before. It was the second-to-last Narnia book that Lewis published, but takes place first in chronological order, making it a prequel to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It follows the exploits of young Digory Kirke (David McKenna, most recently seen in Netflix’s Lord of the Flies limited series), the “Professor” who later owns the wardrobe that takes the Pevensie clan to Narnia. But all Digory wants at this particular point in time is for his sick mother (Carey Mulligan) to recover from her illness. Unfortunatley, his Uncle Andrew (Daniel Craig) has other ideas.
Andrew has created magic rings capable of transporting the wearer to another realm, and tricks Digory’s friend Polly Plummer (Beatrice Campbell) into putting one on. Digory then follows her — not to Narnia, but to a liminal dimension called the Wood between the Worlds, from which even more realities can be accessed via strange pools. One such reality is a post-apocalyptic world called Charn, where Digory and Polly meet a mysterious witch named Jadis (Emma Mackey). Eventually they’ll meet a talking lion named Aslan, who in this incarnation will be voiced by Meryl Streep. From there, the whole saga of Narnia kicks into gear.
The Creative Team
Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew will be written by Gerwig, who told Empire that she is transporting the story from the book’s Victorian setting to postwar ‘50s London, and will be strongly influenced by British rockstars like David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, and The Who.
“Narnia is literally a world made out of music,” she said. “It is a world sung to life by Aslan, and rock ’n’ roll to me felt like a world made out of music.” Though the film will not literally be a musical, Gerwig conceived it as being similar to a “rock opera.” The actual music will be handled by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, who also curated the Oscar-winning Barbie soundtrack.
Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew will unite Gerwig with some new below-the-line collaborators, like cinematographer Seamus McGarvey (Die My Love) and editors Andrew Weisblum (Black Swan) and Nick Huoy.
The Awards Prospects
Any movie that hits theaters before the previous year’s Oscar ceremony has a long road ahead of it, but all bets are off if Narnia is a smash success. Recent winners like Everything Everywhere All At Once, Oppenheimer, and Sinners all hit theaters much earlier than the traditional late-year awards window and managed to stick around in the conversation. Even further back, The Silence of the Lambs conquered the Oscars despite coming out in mid-February, but that’s a high bar to match.
Though Lady Bird made Gerwig one of the few female filmmakers to ever earn an Oscar nomination for Best Director, she has not been similarly honored for her subsequent films. Barbie did score two acting nominations and a Best Picture nod though, so don’t count the film out. That move also won Best Original Song, so depending on what Ronson and Wyatt cook up this time, Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew could certainly compete in that category given Gerwig’s professed musical influence.
The Release Date
Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew is a Netflix production, but is getting a wider theatrical release than any previous movie made by the streaming platform. It was originally supposed to hit Imax this Thanksgiving followed by a streaming release on Christmas, but those dates have since been taken by another Netflix project, David Fincher’s The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth. Gerwig’s Narnia film will now hit theaters on Feb. 12, 2027, followed by a streaming release on April 2.
