I voted for the phrase "ready to rock and roll" but accidently misspoke, but I would have equally voted for the sarcastic/jokey option, as somewhere between those two options is what I reckon she meant.  That said, the notion of deeper meaning, a rock opera or another form of musical or some other type of thematic connection would all be interesting if there is any truth in them.  I suppose only time and further details will tell now...  One thing I can say for certain, I'm glad to hear we may finally be moving to some certain dates with the July commencement of filming that Amy Pascal said. 🙂  

I've also voted for her accidentally mangling "ready to rock and roll", but like Pete, I think she was probably somewhere in between that and joking. "It's all about rock and roll" is what she actually said, which isn't quite a known catchphrase, unlike "ready to...".

I would guess she probably meant something like "Yes, this is going to be something totally new and spectacular and we're just going to dive right into it!" — but without hearing more, we really don't know.

I wouldn't object to a Narnia musical if it was well done, but we've had no real indication that that's what's being planned here. A full-blown Rock Opera wouldn't exactly suit what most of us think of as Narnia (I'm having visions of High King Peter with wild hair and jeans, letting it rip on an absolute axe of an electric guitar, or Trufflehunter, Trumpkin and Nikabrik as an ace rock trio  ), but hey, it'd be an interesting new take, at least...

Overall, I think we need to be careful of reading too much into one rather throwaway remark and I'd rather wait until we hear more for certain before passing any judgment. I remember everyone was getting nearly as hung up months and months ago (maybe it's over a year now) on the comment about Gerwig "working to break the whole arc" of the series, whatever that means, and we still haven't found out for sure.

I voted for the she-meant-ready-to-rock-and-roll option but maybe I'm just trying to delude myself because I want a good Narnia adaptation, and I don't believe rock and roll music has any thematic appropriateness for the Narnia books.  

I actually voted for it being a joke, but the more I think about it, the more I think she misspoke. If she meant "It's all about to rock and roll", that's only one word different from what she actually said (assuming I'm remembering the quote correctly).

It could still be a joke, I suppose, except that I don't see how it would be funny (even for non-fans who wouldn't take it seriously) except as absurdity. And frankly, I can't think of any other reasonable interpretation for Narnia. I would more willingly believe someone someone was turning Lord of the Rings into a rock opera (since a) it's better established in pop culture than Narnia, and b) I mean... there are already rock songs about LOTR).

This is one of those things I would never have even given a second thought. I was just excited to have a start date for filming. Wow it's been so long...

Anyways, I tell my kids all the time "lets rock and roll". I don't think that's what she meant here. I think she was being sarcastic because she couldn't answer the reporters question. 

I will say this though. Waaaaay back in the day, I remember Mark Johnson saying that Walden|Prince Caspian would be bigger, badder, and overall better than LWW. I think my heart sank a bit that day because the book is NOT bigger or badder (better is subjective), but they attempted it with the movie anyways, and in the end, I think most people feel that it fell short.

So hopefully, "rock and roll" isn't this version of "bigger, badder, and better". 

Just embrace each individual book for what it actually is.  

I just saw something about this come up elsewhere and it did give me a little jolt of anxiety! I haven't seen the full article, though? From the little I know of it, I'm hoping she just misspoke and just meant work on the film is readying to get going.

@sir-cabbage, here you go.

https://www.narniaweb.com/2024/12/narnia-begins-filming-in-july-2025/

Interesting to see how the results are going so far!

I thought for certain that sarcasm / joke would be dominating already, given that there is a certain abrupt-ness to the way Amy Pascal delivers the response, as if she's giving an absurd answer to what she perceives as being an absurd question, however I can also see that the link between the phrase "Rock and Roll" as a meaning for "Ready to Go" is too obvious to miss (given that they were already talking about the start date) and as @rya points out, you only really need to add the word "to" into what she said to make it grammatically correct.

I will admit, when I wrote the poll options, I put them in the order I considered to be the most likely - in that a non-Rock musical would be the next most likely option, given that there have been plenty of major Musical productions of LWW over the last few years (you can read my review of one of them here) and they've all been reasonably well received, or at least never considered to be particularly controversial. There's also the fact that Greta Gerwig's last movie (Barbie) was to some extent a musical (or at least had numerous musical numbers in it).

However, having had all day thinking about it, I'm going to surprise myself here and say that my outside bet for this comment is actually somewhere closer to specific thematic reference than anything else.

You see, the thing is, I've become ever more convinced in the last few weeks that Greta Gerwig is going to make The Magician's Nephew as the first film, and I keep coming back to the scene where Aslan sings the universe into creation. Its such a weird and difficult to visualise sequence, and I'm trying to imagine how Greta Gerwig might bring that to life, and how she might explain that sequence to a producer like Amy Pascal.

In essence I'm trying to imagine that conversation, and the words I can imagine Greta might have used would be things like "cosmic" "psychedelic" "trippy" "operatic" and yes, maybe even "rock and roll" - though for reference i'm thinking of something more like the intro to Time by Pink Floyd, rather than say anything by AC/DC.

Maybe there's a whole other conversation to be had there about how you would visualise that sequence (i think there is an active thread about it somewhere on the forum) but given that the one movie i fully expect Greta Gerwig to be adapting contains such a prominent, and iconic, music sequence, i just can't rule it out of my head right now.

I just saw it as a headline on an article by some news site. That silly throwaway line is spawning some idiotic responses. 

Hope Amy will give a disclaimer soon!

Posted by: @coracle

That silly throwaway line is spawning some idiotic responses.

That's what baffles me most about the whole affair - as a senior producer, Amy Pascal's entire business role is all about the sales pitch. Why would she allow herself to go so terribly off message?

For what it's worth, I'm still fairly confident that she was being sarcastic,  given that what she actually said was "it's all about, uhh, rock and roll" with a slight downward inflection at the end and a hand gesture which suggests flippancy. However again, it feels kind of unprofessional and counter productive to offer such a bizarre response, joke or not.

I think that's why I am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt that she actually meant what she said .... Also, what is the NarniaWeb forum for if not for offering wild speculations!

Since someone has voted for her meaning "something else", I'd be interested to hear any speculations on what the "something else" might be — the other poll options cover all the at-least-somewhat-likely explanations I can think of. 

@courtenay whilst I haven't yet been able to conjure up any ideas of what might fit the "something else" category, I can offer up an extension on my earlier wild theory, and provide the following "highly plausible" pre-production conversation that definitely happened....

AMY: "A singing Lion? What does that sound like?"

GRETA: "Good question! I guess it sounds like rock music. You know, the roar of the guitar, the stomp of the drums, the crash of the cymbals... but still with the delicateness and precision of a piano."

AMY: "Oh! I get it! Its all about Rock and Roll!... I'll have to remember that...."

Or maybe not... 🤣 

For "something else", I'm wondering if the "all about rock and roll" comment might have been not so much sarcasm (in the sense of "oh duh, of course it's going to be a completely new take, what did you expect??"), but maybe Amy Pascal was just grabbing the first outlandish and bizarrely un-Narnian-sounding thought that came into her head — perhaps with the intention of it being something that would instantly send commentators and social media into an absolute frenzy: "Ooer, whoa, hey, wow, what on earth did she mean by THAT?!" Basically to throw all the pundits off track and get everyone debating and freaking and generally making noise, and of course generating a whole lot of free publicity for this apparently drastically "different" new version of Narnia... while she and Greta and the team quietly get on with making their movie that actually isn't so outlandish at all. But now everyone will be wanting to watch it.

Is that an idea, or does it come under "sarcasm" after all?  

Honestly, just listening to her speaking only about Narnia brought one thing to mind that she was being sarcastic. But, when I listened to her next talk about how Little Women is all about Money and Women, then I thought well, maybe this is just talk about a deeper thematic meaning so, I voted for that. Honestly, until Greta Gerwig explains more I am not sure what we will ever know what Amy meant by this. Greta might be able to explain her thoughts more clearly while Amy only catches on fragments of the themes Greta is trying to explain to her in conversation.