Greta Gerwig’s Narnia Trailer Is Here, and It Comes With Led Zeppelin
The first trailer for Greta Gerwig's Narnia: The Magician's Nephew opens with a question, "Have you ever seen a world born?", and then answers it with Led Zeppelin. Netflix debuted the footage on Tuesday at an IMAX screening in New York, with Greta Gerwig in conversation with Stephen Colbert, then put it online. The film opens in theaters February 12, 2027.
Why this book, and why it matters
The Magician's Nephew is C.S. Lewis's prequel, the one where Narnia gets made. Two kids use magic rings to hop between worlds, and one of those worlds is the moment Aslan sings Narnia into existence. It's the strangest and most cinematic of the seven books, and the 2005 and 2008 films skipped it entirely. Gerwig's version starts at the beginning.
The cast, per the reports: Daniel Craig as Uncle Andrew, the meddling magician, Emma Mackey as Jadis (the future White Witch), Carey Mulligan, Ciarán Hinds, and two newcomers, David McKenna and Beatrice Campbell, as the kids. Meryl Streep voices Aslan. Per one report, Aslan appears as a cosmic outline and roars rather than speaks, which is a smart way to handle a character that can go very wrong if he starts delivering speeches.
The Stairway to Heaven problem
The song choice is the story inside the story. "Stairway to Heaven" is famously hard to license, and Gerwig reportedly took the pitch to Jimmy Page and Robert Plant directly. They said yes. A rock needle-drop (a pre-existing song dropped into a film, rather than an original score) on a family fantasy is a bold tonal signal: this is not the soft-focus wardrobe Narnia of your childhood. The trailer also shows big practical sets and a bombed-out London, per AV Club, which suggests Gerwig is leaning on real builds over green screen.
The business angle
Netflix is treating this as a theatrical event. Reports say it gets a wide release and an extended theater window (AV Club says 50 days) before streaming on April 2, 2027. Gerwig has said Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos told her to make it for the biggest screen she could imagine. That's a real shift for a company that usually gives films a token run. Netflix has owned the Narnia rights since 2018, and this is the first big test of whether it can sell a franchise film in actual cinemas.
I'm watching two things: how the film opens against the usual February competition, and whether the Page and Plant blessing gets reused in the marketing. Either way, Gerwig is the right person to be handed a risky property. Her track record is about making familiar material feel personal, and a creation story is as personal as myth gets.
Daniel Craig, who plays Uncle Andrew, at the 2012 Skyfall premiere. Photo: Liam Mendes / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0. Featured image (Greta Gerwig, Berlinale 2018): Martin Kraft / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.