Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

As filming begins on Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia for Netflix, 1950s London set visuals have reignited two big questions: Will The Magician’s Nephew open the series, and is the story’s timeline shifting? Meanwhile, casting rumours around Aslan remain unconfirmed.

Speculation has erupted once again around Greta Gerwig’s upcoming adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia, with filming for the Netflix project officially commencing in London on 10 August (local time).

The images and videos that have appeared online apparently confirm earlier rumours that Gerwig will start the series with The Magician’s Nephew—meaning she is very likely following the series’ chronological order rather than its publication order. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), the most well-known book in the series, was the first book published. In contrast, The Magician’s Nephew (1955) was the sixth of seven books published—followed only by The Last Battle (1956).

Not all fans are happy with this apparent decision not to start with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but it is not the only directorial decision—or speculated decision—that has prompted backlash. 

Controversial Changes

Rumours are swirling that Gerwig, best known for her recent work on Barbie (2023) and Little Women (2019), has moved the entire story from its original book setting (beginning in summer 1900) to the post-war England of the 1950s (fans on NarniaWeb claim the set decoration details, including a poster, pointed to a date of 1955). Set photos confirm a 1950s London; however, whether this is a 1955 framing device or a full shift remains unclear.

Earlier this year, Gerwig’s team was embroiled in controversy as reports surfaced claiming that Academy Award-winning actress Meryl Streep was in talks to voice Aslan—a role played masterfully by Liam Neeson in the Walden Media adaptations of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005), Prince Caspian (2008), and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010). 

Those reports remain unconfirmed. However, coverage of recent developments by aggregators like What’s on Netflix and Cosmic Book News has claimed Streep is “expected” to take on the role of Aslan. Fan news website Superhero Hype went so far as to treat the casting as confirmed, with “Meryl Streep as the voice of Aslan”. 

Netflix has neither confirmed nor denied this speculation.

Greta Gerwig’s Narnia – ‘The Magician’s Nephew,’ Filming in London on Day 1!

Starring:
Daniel Craig, Meryl Streep, Emma Mackey and Carey Mulligan. pic.twitter.com/Ych1dXSae7

— UnBoxPHD (@UnBoxPHD) August 11, 2025

Starting with The Magician’s Nephew: Is It Really a Bad Idea?

So let us deal with these three controversies briefly—beginning with the question of chronology.

The widely reported change in chronology should not be as controversial as it has been made out to be. Ultimately, the question is not as straightforward as it might seem, and the reality is that Lewis himself appears not to have particularly cared. 

Personally, I am sympathetic to a publication-order exposure to the story: starting with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and then proceeding to Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, and finishing with The Last Battle (which would be the case even on a chronological progression).¹ It seems that such a reading (or watching) order allows one to engage with the stories as they came to Lewis’s mind and imagination, and as the world developed.

Instead of leading with the backstory and world-building of The Magician’s Nephew, one is thrown into England during the Battle of Britain—and from there into the magical and mysterious land of Narnia. The “explanation” contained in The Magician’s Nephew seems more fitting for a more mature, “seasoned” reader (or movie fan).

While Lewis suggested in a letter to a child fan named Laurence Krieg that the books might be best read in their chronological order,² the consensus within Lewis scholarship seems to agree with me that the publication order is the optimum way to read Chronicles.

Indeed, Lewis himself acknowledged that “perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone reads them. I’m not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published. I never keep notes of that sort of thing and never remember dates.”³

Ultimately, especially given the adaptation to film format, this is a director’s artistic decision. In this case, it may have the positive effect (from Gerwig’s perspective) of establishing the originality of her adaptation, heading off potential comparisons with the films from the early 2000s. 

Lewis’s suggested reading order should not be taken as the ideal way to be exposed to the series—for example, through film, which is a very different medium through which one can engage with a story.

Moving Narnia Forward by 50 Years?

Much more significant to the heart of Lewis’s story is Gerwig’s rumoured decision to shift the entire series some half-century forward in time from 1900 to sometime in the 1950s. While no such change has been confirmed, the 1950s appearance of the set in the circulating images and videos has led many to conclude that the setting has been changed.

Importantly, fans have pointed out that the 1950s style of the film set could simply be a framing device set in the book’s publication date (1955), with the core film still to be set in 1900. Again, this remains fan speculation, but represents a plausible take on the appearance of the set.

Nevertheless, the implications of a full time shift for the entire series could be huge. Although it would be a potentially creative reinterpretation of the film from an artistic perspective, this could push the time setting for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe into the 1990s or even the 2000s, radically altering the character of the story and robbing it of some of its most characteristic plot points (the London Blitz, for example).

Given the centrality of the Second World War and the German Blitz over London to the book (and of war in general to C. S. Lewis’s personal and spiritual formation), such a change would need to be closely scrutinised—and could potentially wreak havoc on the story as Lewis constructed it.

That said, these rumours are mainly based on several very early behind-the-scenes images, which only tell us so much about the eventual form that the film will take.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Catherine Gritz (@obscuretourslondon)

Meryl Streep as Aslan? The Big Controversy

The most enduring controversy surrounding Gerwig’s rumoured plan to gender-swap the Christ-figure, the Lion Aslan. Many have written previously about the centrality of masculine symbolism like the mane to Narnia’s Aslan.

I will not cover that ground again.

One plausible, although unlikely, solution to the controversial Meryl Streep casting—and one that I have not heard raised yet—is that Aslan could be voiced by various actors throughout the series, representing various embodiments of the Lion as He represents Christ throughout the series.

Such an approach would be fraught artistically, making it difficult for audiences to connect with the character over the course of the films.

Nevertheless, this interpretation of Aslan’s character could potentially appeal to recent scholarship by leading Lewis scholar Michael Ward, who argues that Lewis framed the seven Chronicles around the characteristics of the seven planets in medieval cosmology: Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Sol (the Sun), Luna (the Moon), and Saturn. (See Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis.) On Ward’s interpretation, each of the seven books corresponds to a particular “heaven” whose unique qualities are infused into the implicit, but designed spirit (what Ward calls its donegality) of each book—including in the manner Aslan presents in the story.

Some of these correspondences are fairly evident (even from the title of the book)—The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is supposed to correspond with the Sun (the planet Sol); The Silver Chair supposedly is characterised by the Moon (silver being the metal associated with the moon, and insanity being one of the Luna characteristics).

Source: Michael Ward, “The Seven Heavens,” accessed 12 August 2025.

On Ward’s conception, the planet Venus corresponds with The Magician’s Nephew—the story Gerwig is slated to start the series by adapting.

Unlike the kingly, jovial character of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe’s Aslan (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe corresponds to Lewis’s favourite planet, Jupiter) or his knightly embodiment in Prince Caspian, which corresponds to Mars, Magician could choose to represent Aslan in a manner that reflects the virtues of fertility, love, beauty, abundance, and harmony—conventionally more feminine characteristics associated with Venus.

One major issue with this theory is that Michael Ward deals at some length with the question of Aslan and femininity in his seminal book Planet Narnia, and he concludes that Lewis would not have been willing to depict Aslan as a female in The Magician’s Nephew:

“… why ‘blessed be he’ and not ‘blessed be she’? Since Venus is a goddess, ‘the unfathomable feminine principle,’ the Mother of mothers, why is Lewis not prepared to feminise the depiction of Aslan in The Magician’s Nephew? He is willing to turn Aslan into an albatross, a lamb, and a cat in certain other Chronicles: what is stopping him from making Aslan a lioness in this book? The answer is: imagination. Lewis was of the belief that major imaginative difficulties arose when one attempted to depict God in feminine terms.” (Ward, Planet Narnia, 183.)

Ward points out that “Lewis was ready and willing to accept feminine imagery for the divine at the level of the intellect. However, at the level of imagination, his respect for scriptural precedent and his understanding of the relationship between image and apprehension prevent him from entertaining such images.” 

“Although rationally we have good grounds for saying that God is ‘sexless,’ it does not follow that masculine imagery is therefore dispensable and interchangeable with feminine imagery. […] All this serves to explain Lewis’s thinking behind his retention of the masculinity of Aslan.” (Ward, Planet Narnia, 184–185.)

So, how does this relate to The Magician’s Nephew? In that story, according to Ward, “the chosen donegality [the implicit but designed spirit behind the book] requires Lewis to portray Aslan as the incarnation of Venus.”

“How can this be done if Aslan is not to be feminised? The answer we suggest is that Aslan is feminised, but not to the complete exclusion of the masculine. And this is a fair representation of Venus, for Venus may be properly understood as containing a masculine element alongside her feminine ones. It is only because there is a permanent masculine element in Venus that her fertility, her motherliness, exists in the first place.” (Ward, Planet Narnia, 184–185.)

Whether Greta Gerwig and her team engaged this extensively with the scholarship surrounding Lewis’s writing and thought is unknown. 

However, it was over 2,500 days between when Netflix announced the project in October 2018 and when Gerwig and her team began filming this week. This is a promising sign. It is an indication that they are taking their time to ‘get the story right’—whatever that means for them.

Nonetheless, while I feel compelled to put it on the table, I feel that this explanation for Gerwig’s (speculated) decision is highly unlikely. 

Moreover, as Ward suggests, a feminine representation of Aslan would be at odds with Lewis’s conception of the Christ figure—even in The Magician’s Nephew. However, it certainly represents a plausible artistic or interpretative reason a director might choose to represent Aslan—in The Magician’s Nephew, at least—in a feminine form.

Filming has begun on Netflix’s Narnia movie from director Greta Gerwig.

An area in London was converted into 1950s.

More exclusive snaps: https://t.co/KQUXPHCA6A pic.twitter.com/S97eBriUXo

— What’s on Netflix (@whatonnetflix) August 11, 2025

With filming now underway, Netflix’s The Magician’s Nephew will receive an exclusive, two-week screening on IMAX in the United States, starting in November 2026. It is set to be released on the streaming service on 25 December 2026.

___

1. Concerning The Horse and His Boy and The Silver Chair, I have no firm opinion on the recommended reading order. [↩]
2. Letter to Laurence Krieg, 21 Apr 1957, accessed in Letters, vol. 3, edited by Walter Hooper. [↩]
3. Letter to Laurence Krieg. [↩]