Key points
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The trailer for Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew features Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”
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The trailer marks the first time musicians Robert Plant and Jimmy Page have allowed the song to be licensed for use on screen.
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Director Greta Gerwig explained why the former bandmates granted her the unprecedented license.
Led Zeppelin has never allowed “Stairway to Heaven” to be used on screen — until now.
Classic rock fans were surprised to hear the band’s most famous track prominently featured in the first trailer for Greta Gerwig‘s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, as it’s the first time the original recording of the song has been licensed for use on screen.
“They had not let it be used in anything,” Gerwig explained during a Q&A with Stephen Colbert in New York City ahead of the trailer’s online launch on Tuesday . “I was so moved that they allowed me to use the song.”
Gerwig consulted with the song’s writers, vocalist Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page, who personally signed off on the track’s use in Narnia‘s marketing. “I showed them and I talked to them, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page,” she said, explaining that the musicians are admirers of Narnia author C.S. Lewis. “They did it because they saw the heart of the story in the film and they, too, love C.S. Lewis, and they have a reverence for his work.”
She added, “The whole thing was very fortuitous. I’m so happy that it got to be this song.”
The Lady Bird filmmaker explained why she felt “Stairway to Heaven” was the appropriate song to introduce her adaptation of Narnia to the world. “It’s an epic song. It’s an amazing song,” she said. “It’s a narrative. It’s about a spiritual journey. It’s about the true path of enlightenment and spirituality, and then this path of false idols and the wrong roads you can go down. And I was like, ‘This is exactly the story of this movie.'”
Plant has discussed his fixation on Lewis and his friend, fellow Oxford professor and fantasy novelist J.R.R. Tolkien, in the past. “I was obsessed by Louis Spence and C.S. Lewis and the whole idea of the Inklings and the people that used to meet with Tolkien in Oxford and try and wish that they could revive the spirit of what had happened at the turn of the 20th Century,” he said in a 2022 interview with Rolling Stone.
The Magician’s Nephew stars David McKenna as Digory Kirke and Beatrice Campbell as Polly Plummer. Daniel Craig portrays Andrew Ketterley, the titular magician, while Emma Mackey plays the mysterious Jadis, and Carey Mulligan plays Digory’s mother, Flora. Meryl Streep provides the voice of the godlike lion Aslan.
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“This book is about inventing a world, inventing a universe, and creation,” Gerwig said at the Q&A. “And I think in movies of this size, there’s often a lot of destruction, there’s a lot of things being blown up and a lot of things being destroyed. We have some of that, but also, the challenge and the gift of being able to build something up and build a new world out of song, out of people’s art. And I think many of my collaborators told me that that was the most exciting thing, this challenge of creation.”
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