Long before the wardrobe, there was a lion. With Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, Academy Award–nominated filmmaker Greta Gerwig will sweep you away on a fantastical adventure and leave you forever changed. The epic film will travel back to the origins of Narnia, in the first-ever adaptation of C. S. Lewis’s 1955 novel, The Magician’s Nephew. As a lifelong fan, Gerwig is beyond thrilled to bring her singular vision to this beloved world. 

“I was a child when I first read The Magician’s Nephew, and I fell in love with the gorgeously improbable but completely brilliant concept of a cosmic lion singing the world of Narnia to life,” says Gerwig. “I didn’t know that I would grow up to make films, but a universe built out of music is an idea that always lived in my heart. It is the honor of a lifetime to be asked to imagine it into being. Because of C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, I believed in magic and hidden worlds and adventure. I believed that anywhere could be enchanted and that anyone could be swept up into an epic. That wonder and awe was available to everyone, even ordinary people like me ... It transformed me.”

Written for the screen and directed by Gerwig, Narnia pairs newcomers David McKenna and Beatrice Campbell with an all-star cast that includes Emma Mackey, Daniel Craig, and Meryl Streep, among others. You can watch the trailer above and check out new photos below. 

Gerwig unveiled the first trailer for Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew at an exclusive sneak peek event in New York City and sat for a conversation with moderator Stephen Colbert. The writer-director opened up about her love of the books, and revealed that, when she started working on the movie, she reread Lewis’s entire oeuvre and all the works that inspired him .

“I went to Oxford, I went to Cambridge, I went to Belfast, trying to align myself with what his interior life would be,” Gerwig said. “It’s such an amazing honor to undertake an adaptation because you get to commune with a mind that has created you.”

“[I've had] the privilege of adapting the two big books of my life as a child, which are Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and now, [The Chronicles of] Narnia,” she added. 

Audiences will experience a truly global cinematic event in IMAX in theaters on Feb. 12, 2027, and on Netflix on April 2, 2027. Sneak previews only in IMAX begin Feb. 10, 2027. 

What is Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew about? 

Here’s the official logline: “Academy Award–nominated filmmaker Greta Gerwig brings C. S. Lewis’s beloved story The Magician’s Nephew to the screen for the first time in a sweeping adventure that invites dreamers of all ages to experience the creation of Narnia.” 

Can I watch the trailer for Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew? 

Yes! Check out the magical trailer, set to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” above. The band has never licensed the track for a trailer before; Gerwig reached out to lead singer Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page herself to ask for the right to use it, pointing out the thematic symmetry between their music and Lewis’s work. 

“It’s an epic song,” Gerwig told Colbert. “It’s a narrative about a spiritual journey. It’s about the true path of enlightenment and spirituality, and the path of false idols and the wrong roads you can go down. I was like, ‘This is exactly the story of the movie.’ It really is a spiritual quest and a spiritual journey.”

Who is in the cast of Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew? 

✦  David McKenna
✦  Beatrice Campbell
✦  Emma Mackey
✦  Carey Mulligan
✦  Ciarán Hinds
✦  Daniel Craig 
✦  Meryl Streep
✦  Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
✦  Denise Gough
✦  Susan Wokoma

At the New York City trailer event, Gerwig explained what drew her to McKenna and Campbell as the young leads of the movie. Though she auditioned thousands of child actors, Gerwig kept coming back to the recordings the two had sent in, reading lines with their parents. “I fell in love with them through their tapes,” she said. As the audition process went on, McKenna and Campbell kept standing out. “David and Beatrice would find each other in a room. The two of them would gravitate towards each other. It was like I was getting to watch their friendship actually blossom before me,” Gerwig said.

Still, the moment of truth came in the improbable form of a tissue. “I think the moment I really knew it was the two of them was [when] we were doing a screen test,” Gerwig said. “There was a moment where Bea sniffled in between the scenes. David saw it, and he gestured off camera and made a little sign that she needed a Kleenex, and they brought a Kleenex. And I thought, ‘Oh, these kids are already taking care of each other.’”

Keep reading to learn more about the film below. 

ABOUT