@courtenay so is she making the movie she herself wants to watch?  What happened to making movies for the audience? 🙁

@coracle Well, so far we don't know what she's doing, really. The "setting it in the era when she herself was reading it at 8 years old" idea is just a guess that at least two of us here (me and Impending Doom) have made — in my case, it came about because keeping the official canonical gap between MN and LWW would mean setting LWW in the mid-1990s, which struck me as the latest era you could set the story in without modern communications technology adding complications that I'd certainly rather not see added.

Then it occurred to me that Gerwig had made that comment about her creative process involving a dialogue with her 8-year-old self, and I looked up her date of birth, and she turned 8 on 4th August 1991. That's the early rather than mid-1990s, but close enough. So that might be something that's influencing her decision to change the time period of the Narnia books. I doubt it's the only factor, if it is indeed a factor at all. We can still only guess at this stage.  

1940, maybe Digory will go back in time with the rings

How about the 1940s, and Digory is not the professor?  

Just an alternative, especially considering LWW doesn't give the Professor a name, and Lewis didn't begin by assuming he'd been to Narnia himself. 

The Logos Theatre LWW script/production (which I've seen recently) hints extremely heavily in both the scene where Peter and Susan consult the Professor, and the final discussion. Oh, and the almost inevitable flying horse painting in the library,  which I objected to 25 years ago when I saw the RSC production in London. 

Posted by: @coracle

How about the 1940s, and Digory is not the professor?  

Just an alternative, especially considering LWW doesn't give the Professor a name, and Lewis didn't begin by assuming he'd been to Narnia himself. 

The Logos Theatre LWW script/production (which I've seen recently) hints extremely heavily in both the scene where Peter and Susan consult the Professor, and the final discussion.

Just wondering, what do you mean it "hints extremely heavily" at — the idea that the Professor himself has been to Narnia?

The book itself certainly shows, in the Professor's conversation with Peter and Susan, that the Professor is open to the idea of there being "other worlds". When he says "Nothing is more probable", I've always taken that as classic British understatement — implying that he knows it's not merely probable, but true, and is simply avoiding saying that just yet. And in the final conversation with the children, it's hinted at even further when he assures them that they will go back to Narnia some day, and he quotes Aslan almost exactly: "Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia."

Even as a very young first-time reader who was totally unaware that there were other books in the series (I didn't discover that until a few years later!), I always felt Lewis was implying at the end there that the Professor HAD been to Narnia and knew things about it that he wasn't (yet) letting on. We can't say for sure, but I don't agree that "Lewis didn't begin by assuming [the Professor] had been to Narnia himself." It's not spelled out explicitly in that first book, but he's definitely planting a seed there for us as readers to expect to discover — as we later do, if reading in publication order — that this character is speaking from first-hand knowledge of Narnia.

Also, the problem with setting LWW in the 1940s, when MN is to be set in the 1950s, is that then there's absolutely no connection between the two stories apart from them both being set in Narnia. If Digory isn't the Professor in LWW, how does that then pan out for the Friends of Narnia in the final story (assuming the Netflix series actually gets that far)?

And what about the way this entails a lot of playing around with... er... wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff (to steal a famous Doctor Who quote)?? If MN is set in the 1950s — the story in which Narnia is created — but LWW is set in the 1940s (in our world)... does this mean that Narnian time not only flows differently from our world's time, but that people entering Narnia from our world can be plunked down at any time at all in Narnia's history, in a totally non-linear fashion...???   (I mean, seriously. If a group of kids in 1940 walk into Narnia when it's a well-established world with centuries of history, but then a different couple of kids in 1955 step into Narnia just before the Creator brings it into being... there's something more than a little weird going on. )

Each to their own, but I'll stick to my assumption that with MN set in 1955, LWW really has to be set some considerable amount of time after that (most likely 1990s or later).

EDITED TO ADD: It could of course be argued that there is already an example of "timey wimey stuff" happening canonically within the books. When Aslan, at the end of Prince Caspian, describes the Telmarines' origins as being from a group of pirates in our world who were shipwrecked on a South Sea island, that's a scenario that belongs implicitly to the late 18th or early 19th century. (I'm guessing Lewis was inspired here by the famous mutiny on the Bounty, which resulted in the mutineers settling in the South Pacific, some on Tahiti and some on Pitcairn Island; that began in 1789.)

That's in the second book Lewis wrote about Narnia, but by the time he finished the whole series, we have Narnia being created in the year 1900 in our world, which means (logically) the pirates entering Telmar must have occurred some time after that. Going by the timeline he later wrote up, "Pirates from our world take possession of Narnia" occurs in Narnian year 460; there's no exactly corresponding year in our world, but it seems to have happened some time after 1933. That... is not a period in this world's history that fits with the picture of pirates getting shipwrecked on an unknown South Sea island and marrying the native women and so on.

So, basically, there IS a possibility that people from earlier in our world's history could stumble magically into a later period in Narnia's history, which means that it's not an impossible scenario that children from 1940 could enter Narnia in its year 1000, but children from 1955 enter Narnia before the start of its year 1. But that's going to do a lot of viewers' heads in, so to speak.

And the other possibility is, of course, that — as usual, sadly — Lewis didn't do very much planning ahead as he was writing the individual Chronicles and didn't keep track of things he'd written in earlier books, and this is yet another of the many contradictions and discrepancies resulting from that.  

@courtenay   Also, the problem with setting LWW in the 1940s, when MN is to be set in the 1950s, is that then there's absolutely no connection between the two stories apart from them both being set in Narnia. If Digory isn't the Professor in LWW, how does that then pan out for the Friends of Narnia in the final story (assuming the Netflix series actually gets that far)? 

How old is Digory supposed to be, in MN, I wonder? And does he really have to be a particularly "old" professor? If Digory is as old as 12 in MN in 1955, then by 1979, he would be about 24 years older in LWW, that is to say, Digory would be more like 36 years of age. Is that old enough for a hard-working, driven & successful university student to be considered as a professor? 

I voted for the 1970's having 1979 specifically in mind, & definitely no earlier, though perhaps a bit later might do, for LWW, when there was so much going on in the world at that time & that year. These are some of the current events for that year:

1. USSR invaded Afghanistan, to help prop up that country's communist government, after a violent confrontation between Mujahideen & the then government broke out in Herat as early as March, in 1979.  

2. Iran ditched the Shah of Persia, installed the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, & took hostage the staff of the American Embassy in Teheran.

3. Jimmy Carter was the then USA President & USSR was holding the Moscow Olympics in 1980. 

4. UK (where I suppose the film would still be set) was still garrisoning troops in Rhodesia, still locked in against Robert Mugabe's rebels - the troops, & gubernatorial staff would still be needed there until April 1980, when Prince Charles famously went to perform the handover to Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

We are never told what Mr Pevensie ever did for a living, or even if he was actually a long-term friend of the Professor, who was wealthy enough at that stage to afford a maybe auntly housekeeper, called Mrs McCready. But if because of Mr Pevensie's work or even because he was a senior member of the troops, an overseas posting of a year or more would still be a good reason for the Pevensies to spend even part of the school holidays at the Professor's house, especially if 3 of the 4 children were already being sent to boarding school anyway. 

@courtenay  When Aslan, at the end of Prince Caspian, describes the Telmarines' origins as being from a group of pirates in our world who were shipwrecked on a South Sea island, that's a scenario that belongs implicitly to the late 18th or early 19th century. (I'm guessing Lewis was inspired here by the famous mutiny on the Bounty, which resulted in the mutineers settling in the South Pacific, some on Tahiti and some on Pitcairn Island; that began in 1789.)

There, I knew that Australia's being passed into law in 1900, might have had something real to do with the foundation of Narnia.   A year earlier for the pirates, in 1788 & C.S. Lewis might have chosen convict transportation, instead. In 1948, we went a bit further, and that year, Australians became Australian citizens, not British subjects, but even well after 1945, there were still Japanese troops (and/or other personnel?) emerging from the jungles of Indonesia, as well as South Sea Islands. 

Speaking of the 1940's I was reading a Sydney Morning Herald review of the filming of the Magic Faraway Tree.   The author of the review suggested that for all the literary criticism directed at Enid Blyton, she could be credited for the plethora of magic worlds in children's literature, including even Lewis' Narnia Chronicles. The Magic Faraway Tree, published in 1943, of course, follows on from the Enchanted Wood, published in 1939, the third book in 1946 being the Folks of the Faraway Tree.  This whole idea of climbing a tree, jumping into a pool of water at the park, or opening a wardrobe door & finding oneself being in a different time, dimension or place was already well in existence by the time LWW was published nearly a decade later. 

And thank you, for the timeline C.S Lewis used.

If I have to guess, Netflix’s LWW will be set in the 1990’s, especially if they’re going by the Timeline of Narnia (that timeline has 1900 for MN, 1940 for LWW and HHB (yeah, I know HHB is set in the Golden Age, but our world would have been 1940 for it), 1941 for PC, 1942 for VDT and SC, and 1949 for LB). So LWW from Netflix would probably be set in the 90’s, maybe in 1995, especially that MN is going to be set in 1955. How would that work, I don’t know. Though I think it will all depend on how well MN does if they’re going to move forward with LWW and the rest of the books (if they do all 7 books).