Barbie director Greta Gerwig has unveiled the first trailer for Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, her reported $280 million Netflix adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s fantasy book.
The filmmaker premiered the footage at an IMAX event in New York, offering a glimpse of Meryl Streep as the lion Aslan and a magical world set to Led Zeppelin’s 1971 hit “Stairway to Heaven.”
The trailer follows two children, Digory (David McKenna) and Polly (Beatrice Campbell), as they are transported from a gloomy London into a vibrant fantasy world through a series of magical rings.
As the music builds, the pair encounter strange creatures and otherworldly landscapes before witnessing the creation of Narnia.
“Have you ever seen a world born?” a voice asks.
Aslan makes a brief appearance as a towering, star-filled silhouette, letting out a thunderous roar but offering no dialogue.
The trailer also introduces the film’s villain, Jadis, played by Sex Education star Emma Mackey, while James Bond’s Daniel Craig appears as the eccentric Uncle Andrew, whose experiments with magic set the adventure in motion. Three-time Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan plays Digory’s mother.
The movie opens in theaters Feb. 12 before landing on Netflix on April 2. It will become the first Netflix film to receive such a wide theatrical release, breaking with a longstanding policy.
The official synopsis describes the film as “a sweeping adventure that invites dreamers of all ages to experience the creation of Narnia.”
IGN’s Jesse Schedeen called the trailer “a real feast for the eyes,” adding, “I immediately want to see this movie, regardless of whatever 100-year-old fantasy franchise it may or may not be associated with.” Variety said the footage was “dazzling,” while IndieWire said Gerwig had “taken a deliberately exuberant, psychedelic approach to the world of Narnia’s creation — and to the beauty of creation, generally.”
But the Telegraph criticized the trailer’s “garish computer effects” and suggested that Gerwig “is more interested in making a glam-rock opera than doing justice to a beloved series of children’s novels.”
Some fans likened the visuals to Marvel movies such as Guardians of the Galaxy, while others drew parallels with the Harry Potter franchise and the 1986 fantasy musical Labyrinth.
Streep’s casting as Aslan has already drawn criticism from some conservative commentators, who have questioned the decision to have a woman voice the male lion. The character is widely regarded as a representation of Jesus Christ in Lewis’s Christian allegory. Lewis wrote in a 1961 letter that “the whole Narnian story is about Christ.” Liam Neeson voiced Aslan in a trilogy of Narnia movies released from 2005 to 2010.
“This is a well-known ploy of the enemies of God, to subvert and destroy symbols of Christianity in an effort to win a war of attrition for the heart of the culture,” wrote Seth Udinsky in an op-ed for the Christian Post, an evangelical news website.
Gerwig did not address the controversy at the event. However, she previously said Streep was one of the few actors who could meet her criteria for Aslan’s voice, because she could “communicate depth and pathos as well as joy and delight,” and had “a wisdom of experience” as well as “the capacity of fresh wonder, like a child.”
Gerwig described the story as a spiritual quest, which made “Stairway to Heaven” a fitting choice. She met with Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page to secure permission to use the song. “They did it because they saw the heart in the story,” Gerwig said. “And they too love C.S. Lewis.”
The director described reading Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia books as a formative experience growing up. The only comparable experience, she said, was reading Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, which she adapted for the big screen in 2019. She said, “I would not be who I am without these books. They created me.”
