Netflix unveiled the first trailer for Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew on Tuesday in an IMAX theater atop AMC Lincoln Square on New York’s Upper West Side, and Gerwig seemed almost as overwhelmed as the audience around her. After the trailer played, she said she was tearing up and put a hand over her mouth.
The trailer gives the first public look at David McKenna’s Digorey Kirke, who wonders about his uncle Andrew, played by Daniel Craig. In the footage, Digorey’s mother describes Andrew as a magician, the children learn that magic is real, and they are carried into Narnia by a magical ring. Talking animals and a flying horse follow, and Gerwig said the flying horse scene was her favorite to film.
The preview’s use of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” does more than set a mood. Gerwig said she showed the film to Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, and that they were moved enough to let her use the song. She said they saw the heart of the film, understood her love for C.S. Lewis, and recognized the track as the story of the movie as well as a spiritual quest. That choice matters because the teaser is doing the work a trailer is supposed to do: selling a fantasy film as a theatrical event, not a routine streaming title.
That ambition runs straight into the strategy around the release. Netflix is presenting the film as its biggest theatrical debut release in history, even though Gerwig said she only knows how to make movies for theaters. She told Ted Sarandos that imagining the film on the biggest screen she could picture was part of her process, and he told her to make the movie for the biggest screen she can imagine. She also said that earlier conversation helped land her the writing and directing job, after she was introduced to Netflix when Noah Baumbach made Marriage Story for the streamer.
Gerwig said the Chronicles of Narnia books were some of her favorites from childhood and that they shaped who she became. She said she made a beeline for Sarandos after learning Netflix had acquired the rights to the books, told him The Magician’s Nephew should come first, and roughly 20 minutes later he asked whether she wanted to write the film. That leaves the obvious question untouched by Tuesday’s reveal: when audiences will actually get to see the finished movie. For now, Netflix has shown its opening move, and Gerwig has made clear she wants the rest to play as large as possible.
