First, a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world; then, a land of magic, Jesus allegories, and Turkish Delight. In 2018, Netflix bought the rights to C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia books, and the streamer may have found a director for a least a couple of them: The Hollywood Reporter says Greta Gerwig is attached to direct two films in the series.
Which two? Who knows? Which reading order are we going in? What if they do The Magician’s Nephew first? Wouldn’t that be something?
We haven’t had a Narnia movie since 2010, when the previous series of adaptations stalled out aboard the Dawntreader. (But I’ll not hear a single word against James McAvoy’s Mr. Tumnus in 2005’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, pictured above.) Netflix itself hasn’t made any announcements about Narnia whatsoever, but a recent New Yorker piece about Mattel’s terrifying franchise factory (from whence comes Barbie) mentioned Gerwig’s supposed Narnia deal.
And she’s a good choice for the series. Gerwig was first known (outside mumblecore circles) as the writer-director of Lady Bird; she followed that with a well-received adaptation of Little Women before leaping to more commercial circles with Barbie. Narnia needs a gentle hand, someone who can find the middle ground between Lewis’s old-fashioned tone and modern expectations of fantasy on screen. Just please, please, let there be color and light.
Nothing even approaching a whisper of a release date has been announced.
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