•Netflix has released the first trailer for Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, director Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ novel, giving fantasy fans their first look at next year’s highly anticipated film.
The movie — set 1,000 years before Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — serves as a prequel to the larger Chronicles of Narnia story arc. In it, viewers get a look at the very creation of Lewis’ universe (and its famous wardrobe).
‘Have you ever seen a world born?’
Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew trailer
The trailer shows protagonists Digory Kirke (David McKenna) and Polly Plummer (Beatrice Campbell) experiencing worlds beyond their own, courtesy of the “magician” Andrew Ketterley (Daniel Craig) — “infinity worlds” filled with light and dark magic. It is set to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”
“I wanted a rock opera. I wanted it to be big and transporting,” Gerwig told Empire earlier this year. “‘Narnia is literally a world made out of music. It is a world sung to life by Aslan, and rock ‘n’ roll to me felt like a world made out of music.”
The film will serve as the first live-action adaptation of Lewis’ book. Other installments in the seven-book Narnia series have been adapted multiple times, particularly The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Live-action adaptations of Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader have also been released, while The Magician’s Nephew was previously adapted for theater, radio, and in comic form. Netflix acquired the rights to C.S. Lewis’ works in 2018.
“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,” Gerwig said of the movie in a statement. “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.”
The film stars Emma Mackey, Carey Mulligan, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Daniel Craig, and Meryl Streep, as well as newcomers David McKenna and Beatrice Campbell.
The movie was previously expected to arrive in 2026, but Netflix delayed the film back in May. Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew will be released in IMAX and globally in movie theaters on Feb. 12, 2027, and will stream on Netflix on April 2, 2027. Early showings in IMAX will begin on Feb. 10, 2027.
Join the conversation