Posted by: @icarus

I feel like Greta Gerwig has done an amazing job over the last year to win over large sections of the fanbase, even with just the few things she has said. She has talked about her reverence for the books. She has demonstrated her knowledge of CS Lewis' other works and writing. She has talked about her Catholic upbringing. Overall, everything she's said has been highly respectful, and insightful.

And yet this one comment perhaps risks undoing that.

Posted by: @impending-doom

The only takeaway is that Amy Pascal needs to learn that many people online (on both sides) want to add Narnia as a weapon in their culture wars. There are already good reasons why audiences are skeptical of a Netflix/Gerwig adaptation of Narnia, you don't need to fan that flame with vague, misleading statements.

I hope we hear more of Greta Gerwig in the future and less of Amy Pascal. 

It has occurred to me that maybe Amy Pascal is just really not media savvy but I probably shouldn't judge without sampling a bunch of interviews with her. Is she the Netflix producer who normally gets interviewed when they have a big new production in the works?

Posted by: @col-klink

Is she the Netflix producer who normally gets interviewed when they have a big new production in the works?

I think that's why i kept "normal musical" and "rock 'n' roll musical" as separate options, since the former concept at least has a proven track record of being theoretically palatable to a number of different audiences over quite a few decades, whereas the latter is kind of just a ridiculous non-starter..... although somewhat surprisingly, so far in the voting, "normal musical" is the only option yet to pick up a vote!

Perhaps the other options I should have included in the poll were:

• Amy Pascal was thinking more in terms of "that rock 'n' roll spirit" - i.e. meaning to be slightly outside the mainstream or conventional wisdom - 'Rebellious' even. Still not a good fit for Narnia, but a meaning that is distinct from the literal concept of music nonetheless.

• Amy Pascal is an astute scholar of NarniaWeb history and knows how much we love discussing crazy quotes from Senior Executive Producers who probably aren't all that close to the actual production, and so decided to say the wildest and yet most cryptic thing she could possibly think of (note - this would be a seprarate option to the "deliberate misdirection" option)

Overall though, its good to see that (as per the Twitter poll) its "Joke/Sarcasm" and "Mis-spoke" which are run-away winners of the poll

Amy Pascal was thinking more in terms of "that rock 'n' roll spirit" - i.e. meaning to be slightly outside the mainstream or conventional wisdom - 'Rebellious' even. Still not a good fit for Narnia, but a meaning that is distinct from the literal concept of music nonetheless. 

That's the other thing I was thinking of — that possibly she didn't mean "rock 'n' roll" literally, but in the metaphorical sense of being something wild and daring and unconventional ("'rebellious' even", as you said, @icarus). Which on the face of it sounds pretty way-out and, I agree, not what most of us would expect an adaptation of Narnia to be.

On the other hand, though, Aslan is not a tame lion...  

I don't think this was serious at all. One thing is for certain: the YouTube trolls have jumped on the quote. I've seen tons of Narnia videos all fuming over it. I haven't bothered to click on any because clicks and outrage are what they want. Perhaps she got what she wanted: publicity. People can only see Gerwig's Barbie when they see her name. If they remember "Little Women" it is for its feminist commentary on women in the 1800s (a very small part of the movie, I assure you). Having finally seen it, I really enjoyed it. I wish the trolls would stop. By nature of their content, "Little Women" and "Barbie" were wide open to adding that kind of messaging. I don't see the same opportunity in Narnia. 

@anfinwen those YouTubers do amuse me somewhat with their self-righteous headlines insisting that "it looks terrible" and that the Narnia fans are all "outraged".

And yet here's me over on the biggest online community of Narnia fans on the internet, struggling to see any outrage, and genuinely without any real information as to what the project will even be at this stage...

..other than a tonne of incredibly respectful and insightful comments from the Director herself which should give absolutely nobody any cause for alarm.

@icarus

Posted by: @icarus

..other than a tonne of incredibly respectful and insightful comments from the Director herself which should give absolutely nobody any cause for alarm.

YES! That has been so funny to me. There is a real Narnia community that knows way more about what has been going on, all the good signs, and we were able to rationalize through this odd comment. 

Posted by: @icarus

a tonne of incredibly respectful and insightful comments from the Director herself which should give absolutely nobody any cause for alarm.

Why should we believe her? What reason do we have to believe she wouldn't lie if it helped her make money?

Posted by: @col-klink

 

Why should we believe her? What reason do we have to believe she wouldn't lie if it helped her make money?

I'd like to go back to the question of whether Pascal meant Gerwig's vision was for a musical-even though I really, really don't believe that's what she meant. Like not even in a worst-case scenario. 

You see, I've given the subject a bit of thought and I really don't want the next Narnia movie adaptation to be a musical-at least not if it's a book that hasn't been adapted much yet. It's not because I think musicals are always bad. It's because there are a number of people who just don't enjoy musicals, and I want some solid "normal" movie adaptations that everyone can enjoy before we get to niche ones. For the same reason, I don't want an animated adaptation of Narnia books that haven't been made into movies yet until we get some good live action/photorealistic ones even though I find animation to be a fascinating artform and an animated Narnia could be great.

Even apart from that though...musicals are risky. They can be awesome in my experience, but they also be bad pretty easily. Sometimes even if the songs are really good, they're annoying when they slow down the movie (or play)'s pace. So unless you're telling a really introspective story that benefits from the characters saying what they're thinking and feeling out loud for the viewers' benefit, I'd say it's safer not to do a musical. 

I really don't think Amy Pascal was hinting the new Narnia film is going to be a musical (let alone a rock musical) at all. I know I'm one of the ones who have been musing on the pros and cons of a Narnia musical, but I seriously doubt Pascal genuinely meant that.

The thing is, while The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is arguably suited to the musical treatment — it's got the simplest plot of all the Narnia stories, it's the most iconic and familiar of them, and there's been at least one musical stage version of it previously — we're pretty much all suspecting (though without concrete proof) that the book Greta Gerwig is going to adapt first is The Magician's Nephew. And out of all the seven Chronicles, I'd say MN is one of the LEAST suited to being done as a musical. I say that as a huge fan of musicals and of MN!!

The thing is, out of all the books, MN is one of the most emotionally deep and at times outright wrenching. Digory grieving over his mother's impending death and desperately wishing he could find a way to cure her; the eerie deadness of Charn and Jadis's chilling revelation of how she destroyed every living thing in a single moment (Lewis later draws a direct parallel with the threat of atomic warfare in our world); the creation of Narnia, which, while of course it happens through song, is NOT a theatrical performance; the standoff between Digory and Jadis as she tempts him to take the apple for his mother instead of giving it to Aslan... It's strong stuff, it's brilliant stuff, it's possibly one of the best children's stories ever written. (I think so, anyway.) And to put all that into musical-style songs would just totally, totally ruin it. It would cheapen it to the point of absurdity. I don't think any decent director would even jokingly suggest doing that. It's certainly not in line with the kind of reverence for the source material and the author that Gerwig has shown in her public comments so far.

And besides, Netflix has presumably committed itself to adapting all seven books in the long run, if the first one or two films are successful enough — they bought the rights to the entire series, after all, for a not insignificant figure — and if they do one of them as a musical, they then pretty much have to do ALL of them as musicals. Can anyone here imagine them committing to that — or how ghastly the results might be if they did??? I can't...  

I don't have time to look into this this weekend, but I wanted to post it here for you web sleuths in case it might be interesting.
Thanks to Alex Anar for posting in the news comments!

Alex Anar

 February 1, 2025 at 8:03 AM

@Impending Doom , finally found out about “rock and roll”

Listen to The Big Picture podcast Dec 23 2019 ‘Why Little Women matters!’ Time mark 1 hour 28 minute mark , I think Amy used Greta Gerwig’s verbiage

Hope that averts a little bit of your fears, also turns out I was wrong, Amy wasn’t being sarcastic or flippant or avoiding the question but being truthful, just not in the way anyone may have thought precisely .

https://podcasts.apple.com/jp/podcast/the-big-picture/id1439252196?i=1000460539670

@fantasia having listened to the section of the podcast they are referring to, it's actually kind of interesting!

They are discussing various films they used for reference when working on Little Women, and Greta Gerwig says that she described the Waltz scene from 'Heavens Gate' (1980) to the crew as follows:

"isn't this the most rock n roll thing you've ever seen?... But its not rock n roll at all"

For reference, here is the Waltz scene:

If that is Greta Gerwig's benchmark for something being metaphorically "rock and roll"-esque, then I don't think any Narnia fans really need to worry too much!

Personally, it gives me a lot more confidence in my "Aslan Singing the World into Creation" theory, as I can totally see Greta Gerwig describing it along those terms.

If you have seen the video of the interview where Amy says this, you will have seen her grin and stick out her chin straight afterwards. It's a joke, a throwaway, a deliberate but humorous misdirection. 

I wouldn't be against "Narnia" being made into a musical, but "Rock and Roll" would certainly make it feel out of place for a world like Narnia that's supposed to have a medieval atmosphere.

I voted "Something Else" in the poll above because I honestly don't know what Greta Gerwig is trying to get at. She could have misspoken, but then who knows? It's kind of the reason why Narniaweb banned April Fool's jokes because there were of couple of times that there was an April Fool's joke that ended up happening (like the Caspian and Susan romance in Walden's PC and the White Witch making an appearance in VDT).

So "rock and roll" could mean something else. Then who knows what she could be referring to.

Well I guess people can probably breathe a sigh of relief on the musical front.... The casting call didn't specify they needed to be able to sing! 😂

I think the logical boring answer here is that describing things as "rock and roll" is just a turn-of-phrase that Greta Gerwig likes to use a lot, and that this is probably then something that Amy Pascal picked up on:

Alex Anar in the news comments section found yet another video of Greta Gerwig describing something as Rock N Roll in this video here (whilst being sat next to Amy Pascal no less)

Link to YouTube Here

At about 15:28 if you can make the link work.