This year has been a great year for movies, but viewers have so much more to look forward to in 2027. Netflix and Sony Pictures have announced the adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ “The Magician’s Nephew,” the prequel to “The Chronicles of Narnia” series. The film is directed by Greta Gerwig. IMAX and movie theaters will get the movie in February and Netflix users will see it in April.
The film’s production and release date were delayed a few times. It was planned to start shooting in July 2025, but was pushed back a month. This then pushed the release date from the end of 2026 to February 2027.
It has been nearly a decade since fans have seen an adaptation of the series. Disney was the last to do it with “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.” As the book series came out roughly 70 years ago, it is impressive that audiences are still so hooked by the stories.
The book explains how humans are able to connect to Narnia and the birth of the wardrobe in many’s favorite “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
The two main characters of ‘The Magician’s Nephew” are children, played by David McKenna (Diggory) and Beatrice Campbell (Polly). The children embark on a quest through magical rings and find themselves causing commotion in three separate worlds, one of which is their own.
Uncle Andrew is played by Daniel Craig, whose casting received wonderful reviews. The superstar takes on the role of a difficult character. Both incredibly smart and dumb, Uncle Andrew finds something he was supposed to leave hidden and accidentally creates a way to move from world to world.
The world-building in the book is impeccable, and the movie has spared nothing to recreate it. Some sneak-peek photos have shown the lush greenery in the world-between-worlds where the children find themselves the first time they use the rings. Uncle Andrew’s lair is full of color and magic, just like the novel envisioned.
One major difference Gerwig has shown, however, has been casting Meryl Streep as the voice actor of Aslan, the god of Narnia. Lewis was a Christian author, writing “The Chronicles of Narnia” as well as religious books. In Narnia, Aslan is supposed to be God, turning the stories into a Christian allegory.
Meryl Streep* is a woman, which goes against who Aslan was intended to be. He is the king of Narnia, not the queen. Lewis’ family and religious fans are very upset. Many believe that it will change the point of the character and completely deface the original work.
Many people commented on the casting announcement. L. David Fairchild, a pastor from Texas, had some negative thoughts.
“Giving Aslan a female voice isn’t daring or profound or some brilliant act of creative genius. It’s an act of creative vandalism pretending to be artistic sophistication. It’s more ideological slop produced by the machine that’s given us plenty already,” he said.
Gerwig is very set on her idea to have Streep voice the lion.
“I wanted someone who was profound but not pretentious, who had gravitas but not moreso self-seriousness. Someone who could communicate depth and pathos as well as joy and delight,” Gerwig said to toldEmpire.
She also wanted an actor who was above 70 years old to have wisdom but also the capacity to have wonder. The voice actor in the original “Narnia” movies was Liam Neeson.
Knowing the actor and production teams are completely different, the movie will not be part of the series of movies previously made. Gerwig has signed on to make at least two movies in this series, but there is potential for all seven books to be put together. No production team has yet to put the entire series onto the big screen.
While there is some pushback on certain castings, the movie looks like it will be a beautiful recreation of the novel, the first of its kind. The book is filled with magic from all different kinds of places, so Gerwig and the Netflix team have had a lot of work to do in order to take on the project.
We will have to wait until the IMAX premiere on Feb. 10 or the regular release on Feb. 12 to see if the team pulled off the daring, culturally significant book. Until then, people may speculate on what they think the movie should have contained.
