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Still Waiting on ‘Magician's Nephew’ Confirmation

Still Waiting on ‘Magician's Nephew’ Confirmation

Door Jam: July 7, 2025

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Aaron Earls
Jul 07, 2025
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Still Waiting on ‘Magician's Nephew’ Confirmation
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The Door Jam is a place to squeeze in articles about C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, their work, adaptations of their fantasy worlds, news from other franchises, and interesting articles. Unless otherwise stated, I’m not endorsing (or criticizing) any of these but merely sharing them with you.

More outlets have picked up on the indications that filming for Greta Gerwig’s Narnia adaptation has been delayed. Meanwhile, signs continue to point to The Magician’s Nephew, but Gerwig and Netflix haven’t made it official yet.

Pauline Baynes illustration of Aslan from The Magician’s Nephew

Drawing from ScreenDaily and NarniaWeb’s reporting, several other outlets have continued to report that filming for Gerwig’s adaptation will not start filming until this fall.

  • Greta Gerwig’s ‘Narnia’ Delays Filming Until Fall — World of Reel

  • Narnia | Greta Gerwig’s film faces months-long delay — Film Stories

  • Greta Gerwig's Narnia likely delayed by months — Short List

None have confirmed or reported anything new, so this is all still based primarily on ScreenDaily’s article about UK projects that included this one line:

Greta Gerwig’s much-anticipated Chronicles Of Narnia feature is also in pre-production, though filming looks unlikely to begin until autumn.

NarniaWeb also said their news team “picked up on a number of potential indicators suggesting a possible delay in filming,” lending more credibility to ScreenDaily’s comments.

The original plan, according to producer Amy Pascal, was for cameras to roll this month. But no matter when they start production, the target date remains next November, with the Thanksgiving IMAX premiere. As much work as it presumably took to secure an IMAX release for a Netflix project, we can only assume that date is as firm as possible.

There’s also the little fact that we still don’t officially know the book being adapted. Everyone reporting on the movie, from blogs to actual industry trade magazines, has accepted the idea that it will be The Magician’s Nephew. Empire recently ran a brief article on the adaptation choice entitled, “The Lion, the Witch and no Wardrobe.”1

While we still don’t have any official confirmation, we continue to get unofficial support for that claim. NarniaWeb discovered a podcast interview from late last year with Ivana Primorac, the hair and make-up designer for Gerwig’s adaptation, in which she states the film will be The Magician’s Nephew.

So she’s going to do the first book, which is ‘The Magician’s Nephew’. And that one’s never been done before and it’s brilliant. So yeah, so we’re going to do that.

Quibbles with calling The Magician’s Nephew the “first book” aside, this is yet another in the long line of evidence that our first look at Narnia on Netflix will be its creation.

Not Safe But Good

C.S. Lewis quote of the week

The abuse of culture is already there, and will continue whether Christians cease to be cultured or not. It is therefore probably better that the ranks of “culture-sellers” should include some Christians—as an antidote. It may even be the duty of some Christians to be culture sellers.

“Christianity and Culture” in The Seeing Eye and Other Selected Essays

Tumnus’ bookshelf

More books by or about Lewis or Tolkien

If you’ve wanted to read some of Lewis’ more scholarly works, The C.S. Lewis Collection: Academic Works is on a rare sale. In the past 10 years, this ebook has only dipped below $99.99 four times. Right now, it’s $9.99, so I just bought it myself.

This collection includes:

  • An Experiment in Criticism

  • The Allegory of Love

  • The Discarded Image

  • Studies in Words

  • Image and Imagination

  • Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature

  • Selected Literary Essays

  • The Personal Heresy

Other books on sale:

  • The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings (ebook) — $1.99 (-87%), paperback $12.29 (-35%)

  • On Writing (and Writers): A Miscellany of Advice and Opinions (ebook) — $2.99 (-83%), hardcover $13.79 (-43%)

  • The World's Last Night: And Other Essays (ebook) — $1.99 (-86%), paperback $10.69 (-37%)

  • The Silmarillion: Collector’s Edition (hardcover) — $15.51 (-56%)

Behind the Wardrobe

Sneak peek at the bonus articles

Below, paid subscribers can read about a new C.S. Lewis animated series with some first-look artwork, more on the cinematic adaptation of The Screwtape Letters, how reading those demonic correspondence changed the life of a secular humanist, see a new Belfast mural of Lewis’ mother Flora, a wardrobe entrance to a bookstore, why right-wing tech guys can’t get enough Middle-earth, where Tolkien ranks on the greatest novels of all time and the most important books everyone talks about but haven’t actually read, and more.

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