Greta Gerwig has finally opened the door to Narnia. Netflix released the first trailer for Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew on Tuesday, giving audiences their clearest view yet of the filmmaker’s attempt to relaunch C.S. Lewis’s fantasy world — and revealing a production designed to feel as much like a theatrical event as a streaming release.
The trailer immediately distinguishes Gerwig’s version from the earlier screen adaptations. It begins in a restrained, mid-century Britain before expanding into saturated forests, ruined palaces and the Wood Between the Worlds, the mysterious realm that allows travelers to move from one universe to another. Newcomers David McKenna and Beatrice Campbell lead the film as Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, two young friends whose discovery of magical rings turns an experiment into the origin story of Narnia itself.
Daniel Craig appears as the eccentric Uncle Andrew, whose curiosity sets the journey in motion. Emma Mackey plays Jadis, the figure who will become the White Witch, while Meryl Streep voices Aslan. Carey Mulligan and Ciarán Hinds are also part of an ensemble that brings together established stars and first-time leads — a calculated balance for a franchise that must satisfy readers who grew up with the books while introducing the mythology to a new generation.
A ROCK SONG THAT CHANGES THE TEMPERATURE
The most striking creative decision may be on the soundtrack. Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven carries the trailer from its quiet opening to its cosmic final movement. USA Today reported that Gerwig met Robert Plant and Jimmy Page and showed them an early cut before the band approved the song. That matters because the track has historically been licensed sparingly, making its presence more than a familiar piece of trailer music.
Gerwig told reporters at a New York IMAX presentation that she heard a thematic connection between the song’s spiritual journey and Lewis’s story of creation, temptation and wrong turns. The choice is audacious, but not random. The Magician’s Nephew is about worlds being born and choices acquiring consequences long before the wardrobe is opened. The gradual build of the song gives the trailer a modern pop-cultural scale while leaving the imagery rooted in myth.
It also signals that Gerwig is not approaching the property as a museum piece. The director’s work on Lady Bird, Little Women and Barbie has repeatedly connected personal emotion with larger cultural ideas. Here, the trailer suggests she is applying that instinct to fantasy: Digory and Polly’s friendship remains the human center even as the landscape grows stranger and Aslan’s creation of Narnia becomes the film’s defining spectacle.
WHY THE STORY STARTS BEFORE THE WARDROBE
Netflix and Gerwig could have returned to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the best-known entry in the seven-book series. Instead, they chose the book published later but placed first in the story’s internal chronology. That decision gives the new film room to establish its own identity without directly restaging the plot audiences remember from previous cinema and television versions.
The Magician’s Nephew explains how Narnia came into existence, how evil entered the world and why certain familiar objects matter. In dramatic terms, it is both a beginning and a piece of retroactive mythology. Digory and Polly move through the Wood Between the Worlds, awaken Jadis in the dying realm of Charn and witness Aslan sing a new world into being. The trailer presents those elements as discovery rather than homework, emphasizing wonder over franchise explanation.
Gerwig’s personal connection to Lewis is important context. During the IMAX event, she described the books as foundational to her imagination and discussed revisiting Lewis’s autobiographical and theological writing while developing the screenplay. She also visited places associated with the author in England and Northern Ireland. That research does not guarantee that every interpretation will satisfy every reader, but it indicates that the adaptation is being built from sustained engagement rather than brand recognition alone.
A CAST BUILT AROUND CONTRAST
The casting creates its own productive tension. Craig’s Uncle Andrew brings recognizable movie-star authority to a character whose ambitions are often undercut by cowardice and vanity. Mackey’s Jadis appears glamorous, dangerous and visually separate from the more grounded human world. Streep’s Aslan, glimpsed rather than fully explained in the footage, is being positioned around wisdom and wonder rather than simple grandeur.
At the center are McKenna and Campbell, whose relative newness may help the film preserve a child’s-eye perspective. Large fantasy productions can become overburdened by lore, but the story works only if the audience experiences its strange worlds through the friendship, fear and curiosity of two children. The trailer’s scale will attract attention; the credibility of that friendship will determine whether the spectacle has emotional weight.
Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, who collaborated with Gerwig on Barbie, are composing the original score. Their involvement, alongside the Led Zeppelin trailer cue, reinforces the impression that music will not merely decorate this Narnia but help define it. That approach fits a story in which creation itself is musical: Aslan does not simply arrive in the new world; the mythology imagines him singing it into life.
NETFLIX MAKES A RARE THEATRICAL BET
The release plan is nearly as significant as the trailer. IMAX previews are scheduled to begin February 10, 2027, followed by a worldwide theatrical opening on February 12. The film will then reach Netflix on April 2. For a company closely associated with home viewing, that window gives Narnia unusual breathing room in cinemas and turns the film into a test of whether a streaming platform can create a genuine global box-office event.
The strategy makes sense for this particular property. Lewis’s books have deep recognition in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and Gerwig enters the project after Barbie demonstrated her ability to turn a familiar cultural object into a conversation that extends beyond existing fans. Sony Pictures International is handling the overseas theatrical distribution, adding conventional studio infrastructure to Netflix’s global reach.
For American audiences, the campaign is selling a major holiday-season fantasy with an A-list cast and a director whose last film became a cultural phenomenon. For British viewers, the material carries another layer: Lewis’s literary legacy, the period setting and Gerwig’s engagement with locations and traditions tied to the author. The trailer is therefore working in two directions at once — as a Hollywood-scale franchise launch and as a return to a distinctly British imaginative world.
THE REAL CHALLENGE BEGINS AFTER THE TRAILER
The first footage has accomplished the essential opening task: it has made Gerwig’s Narnia feel like a specific creative proposition rather than another anonymous reboot. The colors are bold, the music choice is instantly discussable and the story begins at the mythology’s true point of creation. None of that settles the larger questions around tone, faith, adaptation choices or whether the film can sustain intimacy at blockbuster scale.
Those questions are part of why the trailer is generating attention across the US and UK. A successful Magician’s Nephew could provide Netflix with a long-term fantasy series and strengthen the case for wider theatrical windows on selected films. A disappointing result would make the company’s big-screen experiment harder to repeat. The stakes extend beyond one adaptation.
For now, the clearest impression is that Gerwig has chosen not to imitate the earlier Narnia films or hide behind nostalgia. She is beginning with the less familiar origin story, using one of rock music’s most recognizable songs and asking audiences to see the birth of a world before returning to the wardrobe they already know. It is a confident opening move — and one that gives Netflix’s most ambitious theatrical gamble a distinct identity months before tickets go on sale.