Netflix has finally opened the door to Greta Gerwig’s Narnia, and the first official images make one thing immediately clear: this is not designed to look like a revival of the 2000s films.
The new photos from Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew introduce David McKenna’s Digory Kirke and Beatrice Campbell’s Polly Plummer, while also revealing Daniel Craig as Uncle Andrew and Emma Mackey as Jadis, the character who will eventually become the White Witch. Netflix also offers a look at the mysterious Wood Between the Worlds, one of the most important locations in C.S. Lewis’ novel.
What makes the images more interesting than an ordinary costume reveal is how many of Gerwig’s changes to Lewis’ world are becoming visible at once.
Gerwig is starting Narnia at the actual beginning
Rather than immediately returning to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Netflix and Gerwig are beginning with a story that has never received a live-action feature adaptation.
Published in 1955, The Magician’s Nephew was the sixth Narnia novel released but the first chronologically. Its story explains how Narnia is created, how Jadis enters that world and how several elements familiar from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe came into existence. Netflix describes Gerwig’s film as the first screen adaptation of this particular book.
That makes Digory and Polly more than new protagonists for a reboot. They are essentially taking viewers to Narnia before the Narnia most movie audiences remember even exists.
The official images lean into that sense of discovery. Digory and Polly appear amid the dense greenery of the Wood Between the Worlds, a peaceful but strange dimension containing pathways into different universes. Another image moves in the opposite direction, showing Mackey’s Jadis in a much more extravagant, almost futuristic environment.
This Narnia has a 1950s—and rock ’n’ roll—identity
Gerwig has also moved the Earthbound portion of the story forward in time.
Lewis placed The Magician’s Nephew around the beginning of the 20th century. Gerwig’s adaptation instead takes place in 1950s Britain, something earlier production photographs suggested and which Gerwig has since confirmed.
That is not the movie’s only unexpected influence.
Gerwig has described David Bowie, Paul McCartney, David Gilmour and other British rock musicians as important inspirations for the visual and emotional scale she wanted. Despite the film not being a musical, she has compared its atmosphere to a kind of rock opera.
“Narnia is literally a world made out of music,” Gerwig explained while discussing the project.
Even Aslan reflects that approach. Meryl Streep is voicing the lion, while his design includes differently colored eyes and a facial marking inspired by Bowie. Gerwig said she wanted a performer who could combine authority and experience with wonder rather than making Aslan feel overly solemn.
Combined with Mackey’s highly stylized Jadis, the first images suggest Gerwig is aiming for something brighter, stranger and more theatrical than the earthy medieval-fantasy appearance audiences may associate with the earlier Narnia movies.
Netflix is treating Narnia unusually like a theatrical event
The rollout is also notable for Netflix.
Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew will receive IMAX previews beginning February 10, 2027, followed by a worldwide theatrical release on February 12. It will then arrive on Netflix on April 2, 2027. Netflix says Sony Pictures Entertainment will handle distribution outside North America.
The cast surrounding McKenna and Campbell includes Mackey, Craig, Streep, Carey Mulligan, Ciarán Hinds, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Denise Gough and Susan Wokoma. Gerwig wrote the screenplay as well as directing, while her Barbie collaborators Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt are providing the score.
The first photos still leave plenty hidden, including a full look at Gerwig’s Aslan and the actual creation of Narnia. But they already answer one of the biggest questions surrounding the reboot.
Gerwig is not trying to recreate the Narnia audiences remember from 2005. She is going further back in the mythology—and apparently making it considerably stranger on the way there.
