Narnia’s been done. First as a set of BBC movies and later as an incomplete set of Hollywood blockbusters amid the Harry Potter-fueled YA fiction adaptation goldrush. So if it’s going to come back, it might as well be a completely different spin on the C.S. Lewis books about kids, witches, and talking lions.
We already knew that Greta Gerwig—the director behind last year’s mega hit Barbie—was working on Narnia adaptations for Netflix, but thanks to an interview with the project’s producer, Amy Pascal, we now have a bit more color on what exactly those will consist of. The first of the movies will begin filming in 2025 and is “a very new take on Narnia,” she told Deadline this week. “It’s all about rock and roll.”
Come again?
For anyone unacquainted with the seven-book series, Lewis’ Narnia is a fantastical world children can occasionally access where time moves differently and the mundanities and horrors of normal life are replaced by magic, monsters, and a lion as Jesus allegory called Aslan. There is no rock and roll in Narnia, at least as we currently know it, or even much music.
So does this mean Gerwig’s take on the famous series will be a musical? Or will it be more subtle than that, like Sofia Coppola’s pop music-laced Marie Antoinette from 2006. We did get more than that in last year’s Barbie, which despite some full-blown numbers like “I’m Just Ken” sung by Ryan Gosling, stopped short of being a traditional musical.
“I don’t know,” Gerwig told Gamesradar last year on the subject of the upcoming Narnia movies. “I haven’t even really started wrapping my arms around it. But I’m properly scared of it, which feels like a good place to start. I think when I’m scared, it’s always a good sign. Maybe when I stop being scared, it’ll be like, ‘Okay. Maybe I shouldn’t do that one.’ No, I’m terrified of it. It’s extraordinary. And so we’ll see, I don’t know.”
If 2024’s Wicked is any indication, a rock and roll musical adaptation of one of the Narnia books is probably just what the century-old books need to get people reading them again.
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