So from what we've now been hearing, Netflix essentially snapped up the rights to Narnia as a compensation prize for not getting the rights to LOTR — after they actually offered a bigger bid for that than Amazon did and got turned down because their plan for Middle-earth was to do a "Marvel Cinematic Universe" style franchise. If that really is Netflix's mindset, then I'll be jolly glad if they have scrapped their plans to adapt Narnia. If so, it's sounding like Narnia may just have dodged the proverbial bullet.  

And if the Netflix project is now dead in the water, then I hope the rights to Narnia might one day be picked up by a company that has its heart in the right place to adapt this incredibly special and beautiful series in a way that does it justice. It's never been done yet (despite some valiant attempts), but that doesn't mean it never will be...  

Posted by: @son-of-eve

Because it just might turn out to be a great adaptation, and if it's bad, I have no problem putting it out of my mind.

For me, that depends on how bad we're talking. If it's just boringly bad, I could get over any disappointment. If it's spectacularly bad, I may be bitter for a while. Plus, if it's made by a big company, like Netflix or Disney, there'll be advertisements all over to remind me, possibly for years to come.

Posted by: @son-of-eve

If they never do anything with it, it's just a bit of a shame.

I know what you mean. The Silver Chair, The Horse and his Boy, The Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle have so many powerful and memorable images. I'd love to see them onscreen.  

Posted by: @col-klink

I know what you mean. The Silver Chair, The Horse and his Boy, The Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle have so many powerful and memorable images. I'd love to see them onscreen.  

For this reason, I'm kind of hoping that if the rights to Narnia do become available at some point in the near term future, that Disney Plus scoops them up - not because I have any particular love for the Walden movies, but because Disney should be able to pick up where they left off, and we would get to explore some of the remaining books on-screen without having to sit through re-treads of LWW and the rest beforehand.

Realistically the only role they have to recast would be Eustace, and they should even be able to bring back most of the adult Pevensies for their cameos in HHB and LB without much of an age issue either (assuming they got it done swiftly).

A few thoughts from a lurker.

We don't actually know what has been going on behind the scenes when it comes to the Narnia adaptation. They might have learned something from the LoTR bid, there are still four books which haven't been turned into movies (as mentioned previously) and three are also remaining for TV show creators. Potential character dramas are somewhat worrying but I'd be willing to reserve my judgement if the rest of the material is solid enough. I've also been hearing good things about The Sandman, but I haven't checked it out myself yet.

The recent article doesn't paint the bids in the best light however, and things are looking bleak for Netflix on several fronts. I have to admit that my cynicism has the upper hand at the moment.

I think the financial situation with Netflix creates a less than optimistic situation.

I sort of enjoyed A Series of Unfortunate Events, but it didn’t hit the mark. 

I’d rather that Disney rebooted the series on Disney+ or Narnia returns to theatrical releases, rather than streaming services as a series. 

I don’t think it would be a hard sell to reboot the series as theatrical releases with The Magician’s Nephew first. Bring back Tilda Swinton and Liam Neeson for the nostalgia and the known talent, but introduce new actors in the other roles. 

I was just reading the excellent opinion piece by @icarus that's now been published on NarniaWeb, expanding on the thoughts about Netflix's current position that he's shared in this discussion: Netflix Has Changed Since Acquiring Narnia

It just makes me even more hopeful — much though it sounds like a negative thing to hope for! — that Netflix will eventually admit they won't be able to make anything worthwhile out of Narnia and will quietly drop the whole project, freeing up the adaptation rights to be bought by some other company in the future. I know at least one other NarniaWeb forum poster (I can't remember who, sorry!) has said "I'd rather have a bad adaptation than no adaptation at all", or words to that effect, and I can understand that view, but I can't agree with it myself.

Maybe it's just that the seven Chronicles are my favourite fictional works of all time — honestly, I would go so far as to say that to me, they're just about as sacred as any books can be without being actual scripture. Seriously, these are, in short, the books that first introduced me to God, as a child growing up in a completely secular family and community where religion simply didn't (and still doesn't) enter into anyone's head as something to be taken seriously in any way. And that effect of Narnia stayed with me even when it got buried and virtually forgotten for years under agnosticism and depression, until I saw the light again — and soon realised that, although I think the "Good Shepherd" would have found me anyway, I don't think I would have recognised Him nearly as quickly if I hadn't met Him before, through Aslan. (Sorry if all that sounds overly florid and gushy, but it really is the best way I can put it.)

Now obviously the Chronicles of Narnia don't have that exact same impact on every child, or adult, who reads them. But knowing that they can have that impact, and knowing how much it means, I just don't want yet another screen adaptation that, like all the previous ones, fails to do Narnia (and Aslan) justice. This is one fantasy saga that could genuinely change someone else's life too, if it's done right.

Is it even possible for an adaptation of Narnia to really capture this spirit that C.S. Lewis managed to infuse into those books (without, by his own account, deliberately setting out to do so)? That I don't know. But I'd like to hope it's possible, if it's done by people who truly love and understand the Chronicles and can find a way of bringing across that Christliness that's in them, without either being heavy-handed and preachy about it, or else conveniently editing it out or burying it under a load of sensationalism and money-grubbing hoo-ha. At the very least, I'd love an adaptation that inspires people who haven't yet read the books to read them — preferably all seven of them — and to find they recognise these stories and can now go into them even deeper through reading the originals.

To get back to the point of this thread, from what can be picked up about Netflix now, it really doesn't look like they have the mindset OR the impetus to do anything like a good job of Narnia. I really would rather have the rights available again for some other company to pick up — one that will see it not as a mega-money-spinning "cinematic universe" to compete with other studios, but as what it really is: a beloved children's fantasy classic that just happens to have a deeper (and incredibly awesome) message for those who are open to it. That's what I'm hoping for, anyway...  

It will be interesting to see what happens to Netflix's adaptation of 'Avatar The Last Airbender' when that releases shortly. It was one of Netflix's other big franchise acquisitions from back in Late 2018 along with Narnia and Roald Dahl, and it recently wrapped up shooting.

Many of the other expensive-to-produce shows from back in Netflix's "spend big" era ended up getting prematurely cancelled after just a couple of seasons (Marco Polo, Sense 8 etc.) and many of the shows which have straddled that transition period have either had the squeeze put on them recently (Sandman eventually got a second season renewal but had to really struggle for it) or have found themselves coming to natural conclusions (Stranger Things, Locke & Key, etc.)

Perhaps The Last Airbender could be the last hurrah for big-budget TV at Netflix, or maybe it could be the thing that turns it all around and convinces the company to change track and go big again (Netflix's Matilda adaptation looks decidedly low budget if you ask me).

We have though even just this weekend seen that Netflix's tightening of the purse strings and tightening of the creative controls causing consequences for another 2017 commissioned show, 'The Witcher', with star Henry Cavil walking out on the production amid plenty of rumours swirling about creative differences.

For certain the days of huge budgets and unrestricted creator control are long over.

I’ve been following this thread while lurking and getting my Narniaweb account back up and running, and it’s been a really interesting discussion! After reading this thread I pretty much gave up on Netflix making anything and just assumed Narnia would eventually pass to a different studio. With the Greta Gerwig rumours, I’m pretty surprised and happy that maybe something will come of the Netflix deal after all! 

Gerwig is a fantastic Director and her work shines in intimate and dialogue-heavy scenes between characters. I’m not a constant fan, but I think there might be something special in the works, if these rumours are true. 

I think a smaller scale adaptation that focuses on characters and dialogue that puts the ‘epic-ness’ as the backdrop, will be more faithful to CoN and Lewis than Disney or Fox’s push to make it epic like HP or LoTR. I also don’t think Gerwig would shoehorn a random romance into the plot for Susan…

Narnia is its own thing and I find that the smaller scale moments are more important and impactful in the books than big scale stuff. The battles and all that have bigger stakes after quieter moments of discussion between characters. 

I hope the rumours will come out to be true. I also hope that this quiet period has meant that a lot of thought and care has gone into bringing Narnia back. 

It’s Netflix in the end… if they return to strong narratives and creatives that take their time to tell a good story, then Narnia will be in safe hands. 

I think if Netflix invests in a considered and well-written and produced Narnia, like they originally did with their first big tv shows, then something amazing might just happen. 

I haven’t watched anything on Netflix proper since Lost in Space and that was ok. 

First off, I'm excited to have some news/rumours to discuss. After reading @icarus' opinion piece on the homepage (I still recommend checking it out if you haven't), I was preparing for a Hundred Year Winter with no updates when this news dropped 😆 

Do we all think Gerwig will be directing MN and LWW? I think those are the two that makes the most sense if she's directing two Narnia films.

Knowing Gerwig’s filmography, she will do MN and LWW. 

I follow Gerwig for personal reasons and I was pleasantly surprised to see this development.

Turning MN into a film is a radical move and she’ll do it. Narnia might come across as conservative, but it is radical because so many people love it.

Talk about MN and promote it enough and they will develop it as the first movie.

@impending-doom I had also just read that piece a couple of nights prior and was completely convinced that it would be a very long time until we’d get something 😆 I really hope that if it’s true then it’s a good thing! But if not then at least we have something to talk about lol!

I’m hoping for MN and LWW. Seems like the obvious place to start and I’d really like to finally get a MN adaptation. Very convenient that it comes first chronologically since that boosts its chances of coming first in production

I have to admit though, I’m not sure why they wouldn’t hire one director for the whole series in order to keep a consistent tone throughout, unless they just want to see how the first two do before they commit her to the rest of them or if she doesn’t want to be tied down to the entire set of stories. I feel like every time a franchise switches directors around repeatedly it starts to get messy because different people can have such different visions that they don’t mesh well together when looked at as a whole (especially in cases like the Star Wars sequels where it would just get passed to the next person without an outline, and occasions in more recent Marvel projects where a character’s personality will randomly change in jarring ways depending on what the individual directors wanted to do with them.) Even in prior Narnia adaptations, when it went from Andrew Adamson to Michael Apted there was a fairly clear shift, and while I enjoy VotDT and I understand the behind-the-scenes reasons that changes happened, I wish there had been a little more of a feeling of consistency between movies. Maybe there’s a good reason for Greta only being tapped for two of them that I’m simply not thinking about at the moment or I’m just unaware of how stuff like this works, but it struck me as strange.  

Posted by: @impending-doom

First off, I'm excited to have some news/rumours to discuss. After reading @icarus' opinion piece on the homepage (I still recommend checking it out if you haven't), I was preparing for a Hundred Year Winter with no updates when this news dropped 😆 

Hahaha, there was a part of me that knew that as soon as we did an article to explain why there had been no news, that there would suddenly be news! Id like to think though that perhaps the article stirred the universe into action! 

Overall though I still think every point raised in that article is still valid - the financial situation that Netflix is currently in is vastly different to the one they were in back in 2018, and there are a lot of behind-the-scenes reasons which potentially explain why development on Narnia hasn't kept pace with other projects.

I think that's perhaps why the rumour of Greta Gerwig seems so bold - it seems like something the Netflix of old under Cindy Holland would do. A pure prestige move.

With modern day Netflix however I would fully expect them to hire a no-name director on the cheap, spend the majority of the budget on two algorithm-friendly big-name stars like Ryan Reynolds and The Rock, and get the whole thing condensed into an easily bingeable 2 hours for maximum clicks.

In the latest season of Rick and Morty on Netflix (very, very adult and can be offensive) there was a fairly fun reference to Narnia. It was a nice literary reference that not a lot of people would pick up on. It kind of framed Narnia as more science fiction than fantasy… 

It was quite clever, because it referred to how time works differently when jumping between worlds. From memory, the characters (one references Narnia explicitly) uses the ‘time  works differently in another world’ to age wine for a dinner party… albeit to disastrous results.

Somehow I don’t think that any of us would venture through the wardrobe just to age wine…

It wasn’t even a parody of Narnia, but just a clever way of making a reference to an aspect of universe-hopping.

The episode is very, very adult and otherwise has a lot of crass and cheap humour. So I don’t recommend people go and watch the episode lightly!