Months after rumors first linked her to the property, Barbie director Greta Gerwig confirmed in a new New Yorker profile that she is set to take on The Chronicles of Narnia for Netflix. The profile doesn’t quote Gerwig herself on the news, but presents it as straightforward fact — and when you have that level of access to the creator, it would be very strange to get something like that very wrong. According to the report, Gerwig has a deal to write and direct “at least two” films set in that world, presumably meaning she will spend the next five years or so working on the franchise.
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Netflix acquired the rights to the Narnia series back in 2018, striking a deal that gave them the license for film and television. The Narnia rights, coupled with their purchase of Roald Dahl’s library, has given the streamer a deep bench of beloved kids’ content.
Between 2005 and 2010, Walden Media produced a trio of Chronicles of Narnia films, adapting less than half of the seven books. Critical and box office reception to the franchise was mixed, and after the first two, Walden parted ways with original distributor Disney and started to work with Fox. A fourth film never got off the ground, but since Disney bought Fox, fans can watch all three of the 2000s-era Narnia adaptations on Disney+.
Since 2018, Netflix has remained relatively quiet on the property, outside of appointing Coco co-writer Matthew Aldrich as the lead architect of the endeavor. In November, rumors emerged that Netflix was hoping to get Gerwig to commit to launching the franchise with two feature films.
Since they seem to want to expand the world out with TV, it is not immediately evident how slavishly the adaptations will follow the books. If they are pretty close to the source material, there are two likely starting points for the franchise: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first Narnia novel written by Lewis and the most famous installment of the franchise; and The Magician’s Nephew, the sixth novel Lewis wrote but, as a prequel, the first in The Chronicles of Narnia chronologically, and the one Lewis preferred to be read first. The Magician’s Nephew has never been adapted into live-action (it was to be the next film made in the Fox series after The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but the rights lapsed), which would give Netflix something fresh for viewers to enjoy without drawing comparisons to past adaptations.
There is no official release date for the Netflix/Narnia launch.
