Report: Greta Gerwig's $280 Million 'Narnia' Sequel is in So Bad, Netflix Fired Her Boss Over It
When Disney launched it's Chronicles of Narnia franchise with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 21 years ago, I was encouraged. I had two young kids at the time, and a new family-friendly fantasy series about Good vs. Evil was very much welcome. Plus, when I was in middle school, I read the entire books series. It was sort of my gateway drug into the Fantasy genre that led to The Hobbit and then the hard stuff, Lord of the Rings.
And as it turned turned out, the first film was terrific. It was true to the CS Lewis source material. The world-building was convincing, seamlessly blending real locations, practical effects and CGI. And the cast was outstanding. Unfortunately, the second and third installments didn't do as well at the box office and Disney scrapped plans to do the final four books. That's show business.
So when it was announced Netflix was picking up where Disney left off, I should've been optimistic. But I wasn't for two reasons. One, because it's Netflix, who might hit the occasional homer, but has a terrible OBP. And because I know what year it is. We're at the point in entertainment where any time a major studio film is released that isn't some self-absorbed, overindulgent "reimagining" of some beloved, respected IP made to lecture audiences about current events or whatever, it's a pleasant surprise. What we get much more often is dreck like Rings of Power, or a Frankenstein's monster so sexy and sympathetic that the hot girl wants to bone him in hopes of fixing him.
That was my concern with the next chapter in the Narnia series, The Magician's Nephew. And so far it seems like those fears are about to be realized. Even with one of the hottest directors in Hollywood attached to it, and a practically unlimited budget, this project has caused a bloodletting at Netflix:
... On a Zoom call earlier this year, Lin is said to have been “dismissive” to Gerwig regarding the progress of the "Narnia" movie, which carries a $250 million budget. Word traveled fast around Netflix that the meeting had gone south. Soon after, Lin disappeared from the film, per sources, and film VP Doug Belgrad stepped in as the primary Netflix exec overseeing the project (until, of course, he was laid off last week).
Source - “Everyone is collateral damage.”
That’s how one top Netflix insider summarized another bloody Monday at the streamer, which saw Dan Lin ousted as the company’s head of film.
Following last week’s 6% workforce reduction at Netflix – which claimed victims including chief content officer Bela Bajaria and Lin’s right-hand Doug Belgrad – consensus said it was a matter of time before co-CEO Ted Sarandos would show Lin the door. ...In the end, it wasn’t working. ... Lin could not dance fast enough to find the balance between sticky streaming titles and theatrical release experiments. ... There are also some interesting leaks around tension he’s said to have with A-list filmmakers like Greta Gerwig and Ben Affleck, which we’ll get to. ...
In the weeks before his exit, reports said Lin clashed with filmmaker Affleck (director of the just-released “Animals”) over the use of his AI platform InterPositive. Perhaps more consequential was a rift with Gerwig this summer over the upcoming “Narnia.” The movie represents a $250 million theatrical-first gamble.
Four sources with knowledge of the matter said that, indeed, Lin and Gerwig had a falling out during a Zoom call about the project earlier this year. On a virtual meeting populated by numerous Netflix executives, Lin is said to have been “dismissive” to the director in conversation about the progress of the film.
All this coming just before Netflix earnings report came out, and the news there is less than ideal for a company that's been the "N" in the FAANG acronym Wall Street's been using for the tech companies that are driving the economy:
… 30% year-to-date to the lowest point since August 2024.
It can't have helped that the trailer, while not quite getting the ratio that some of the recent Disney properties like the Snow White remake have gotten, isn't being well received at all. Right now it's got 102K Likes to about 65K Dislikes. With 70K comments, almost unanimous in pointing out that Gerwig took Lewis's naturalistic fantasy realm of forests, mountains, fields, rivers … and turned it into just more AI slop. Like the worst of Marvel.
"Aslan the Great Lion will return in Avengers: Doomsday"
"Narnia: Love and Thunder"
"Narnia: Multiverse of Madness"
"Narnians of the Galaxy"
… just to Copy & Paste a few.
And credit to the creative mind who pulled the music from the trailer and gave it to us without Led Zeppelin to distract you from how dull and lifeless it is:
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Source - The Narnia trailer’s dislikes have hit 65,000 even as Netflix touts 481 million views. Netflix has also fired Dan Lin: we’re told he clashed with Snyder, Affleck, Gerwig, and [David] Fincher. …
The source also torched Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, the biggest movie Netflix has left on the calendar. …
“Narnia is a mega woke slop insanity,” says the source. “Think Amazon Rings of Power but worse.”
The $280 million movie is already in serious trouble inside Netflix, where insiders have called it “awful” and “a genuine problem.”
That report also described friction between Gerwig and Lin over the film, with reshoots ordered after a summer test screening.
All of which is less an indictment of Greta Gerwig, who proved she can take a script about America's favorite doll and turn into a gargantuan $1.4 billion blockbuster, and more about the people who handed her CS Lewis's work, which is one of the most influential novels in all of Christendom. In fact, the books are a direct Christian allegory, which is something Lewis's best friend JRR Tolkien criticized him for. Because while Tolkien was a big fan of Jesus and helped convert Lewis from agnosticism to Catholicism, he had no love of obvious allegory. He preferred what he termed "applicability," a more subtle writing style in which the religious themes are more implicit and, he argued, better absorbed through the storytelling.
Which is a fight the director of this film doesn't have a dog in:
Well, alright then. Look, the last I heard, this was still America. And unless and until they take an eraser to the 1st Amendment, she's free to be as uncomfortable and creeped out by CS Lewis's beliefs as she wants. More power to her. But that discomfort and creeped outedness makes her uniquely unqualified to adapt The Magician's Nephew or anything else he wrote for the screen. It would be like hiring someone to direct your Science Fiction movie who hates science and fiction. And movies, for that matter. I mean, to the best of my knowledge, Hallmark isn't handing projects to directors who don't like romance between two totally opposite people who seem to have nothing in common but somehow make all work, fall in love, and discover the true meaning of the holidays.
It's simply not done. Or if it is, you can't expect to get good results from someone with zero reverence for the original artist's vision. Which is exactly what Hollywood keeps trying. And rarely gets results. So now Netflix has sunk $280 million in a project that seems to be causing a bloodletting that is causing firings, layoffs, and their stock to tank, even before it hits theaters.
Oh, and letting Aslan be voiced by Meryl Streep by itself was the dead giveaway this film was going to be Dead on Arrival. There is but one true Aslan. And he is Liam Neeson: