The Lion, Lady Bird, and the Streaming Service
Soon, friends, family, and co-workers will be re-ingrained in the Great Debate: “Sure, Turkish delight is good, but is it good enough to sell out your family to a gorgeous evil witch?” Greta Gerwig, fresh off momentous Barbie success, is getting back to a project she was already working on. Gerwig had already started writing a draft of her upcoming adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia stories before even beginning the filming of Barbie, she told Time in a February 21 profile. The project was first revealed in July 2023, with Gerwig making at least two movies in the series. Slowly but surely, details about the series are eking out about the next entry in the Great Battle for Fantasy. When fighting in the streaming wars, it’s always good to have a resurrected lion Jesus on your side.
Which of Narnia’s Chronicles, exactly?
Gerwig may be chronicling Narnia, but there’s a lot of lore in that world, and two movies wouldn’t come close to covering the whole series. Makes sense for at least one to be based on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first book written and the best-known entry into the series. Still, the original series’ release pattern eschewed chronological order. Lewis first put out TLTWTW in 1950, continued the series for three chronological installments in 1951 to 1953, put out two separate prequels, The Horse and His Boy (1954) and The Magician’s Nephew (1955), and then ended the series with The Last Battle in 1956. The Disney- and Fox-released film series in the 2000s only made three movies, never getting to the planned adaptation of the fourth-released book, The Silver Chair, despite a 2014 fan contest to name the film’s antagonist. Those films avoided the prequels altogether, as did the 1988–90 BBC series. In November 2023, Scott Stuber, the then–film chief of Netflix, told Variety that, while The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is the “preeminent” book, Gerwig was working on how to “break the whole arc of all of [the series].”
So, what do we know?
Gerwig told Time that she was drawn to the “paradox of the worlds that Lewis created,” through the combination of mythologies like Greek fauns, Father Christmas, and the British Empire. Ted Sarandos, meanwhile, told the magazine that Gerwig’s version of the story will be “bigger and bolder” than what audiences imagine. Lewis’s version of the story is deeply associated with Christianity to the point where “Talking Narnia to Your Neighbors” is a real 2005 headline from the Evangelizing website Today’s Christian Woman. In terms of adaptation, Stuber confirmed to Variety in his November interview that Gerwig’s version is “rooted in faith,” Previous examples of Gerwig’s work being informed by Christianity include Lady Bird eating non-blessed communion wafers, Lady Bird getting suspended for sassing a pro-life activist, and Barbie killing God. This time, Susan Pevensie, the deicide’s on you.
When is this coming out?
Big Red first acquired the rights to the Narnia series in 2018, but still no movie. Not even the Golden Age Prophecy could tell us.
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