Hmmm, I don't know that I would have a major issue with changing the title, as long as it compliments rather than detracts from the story. Specifically, using Narnia instead of The Magician's Nephew is not a game-stopper for me... though as a bit of a purist, I do hope they keep the name. Narnia is, as you say, the actual backstory being laid out... but I feel The Magician's Nephew has its own mysterious appeal. All in all, I could live with Narnia as the title for The Magician's Nephew.

I'd mainly object to calling the movie Narnia because...well, it's a really boring title! And what are they going to call the sequels? Narnia 2? Narnia 3? Lame!

But, hey, if the movie itself is really good, I'll be able to forgive the title.

Posted by: @rose

This actually follows an ongoing pattern of the project simply being referred to as Narnia rather than The Chronicles of Narnia, which has made some news team members wonder if Narnia could be the official title.

As one of the people who has been thinking exactly that. I'll add a few random thoughts that have crossed my mind here.

• There is a peculiar consistency about the way the movie has been referred to in both official and semi-official sources. At first I thought it was just my news starved brain reaching for anything to get stuck into, but now it's really starting to become noticeable. I feel like we've all been sat here wondering what the title is going to be, and yet it appears to be right there hiding in plain sight.

• Calling the movie TCON:TLTWATW feels horribly drawn out and old fashioned. It was definitely on-brand for the early 2000s alongside the Star War Prequels, the LOTR films, the Harry Potter Films and the Pirates films with their increasingly long "Title Colon Subtitle" formats, but in the modern day it feels odd. Now I'm looking more at "Dune" "Wonka" and indeed "Barbie" as it's one word contemporaries.

• I also though think about how Netflix saddled "Glass Onion" with the awkward subtitle of "A Knives Out Mystery", even though that makes zero sense for either film. Clearly franchise recognition is still important to them, so maybe just calling it "The Magician's Nephew " was never going to fly 

• I look at all the comments Greta Gerwig has made about Narnia as a world, and how few comments she has made about characters such as Lucy, Polly, or Jill... The sorts of young girl characters I would have expected her to find super relatable given the protagonists and subject matters of her three previous films. This kind of makes me think that "Narnia the place" is the main draw for her.

• I'm also increasingly drawn back to the "breaking the arc" comment, and wondering if Greta might do something more elaborate with her film than simply adapting one book... Something more akin to the way she adapted Little Women as a Book 1 / Book 2 mashup.

I'm still not entirely sure what any of it means, but my Spidey senses are definitely tingling on this one.

I would rather it was the Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, but calling it Narnia in press certainly makes sense. This wouldn't be the end of the world, but Narnia 2 seems silly. Please don't do that.

They don't even show Narnia in MN until the end of the book. This is why it makes no sense to do MN first. I mean doing that already means the adaption of the series will not be good. I just cannot imagine what they are going to do to LWW if they do MN first. If people have problems with the Walden version then there is no hope that LWW will be good if it is the second movie made. It will be completely different than the book in so many ways unless they completely ignore the fact that the even made MN which they won't.

Aldrich was hired as the creative architect for both series and films....the entire thing. Which to me means they were planning the entire series from the very beginning. I can't think of any better way to approach the series. 🙂

Now, it's my personal opinion that the books will be the films and the series will be spin-offs (such as Jadis vs her sister in the Fall of Charn).  This is what everybody else is doing in Hollywood.

But "Narnia" will be the overarching title, as opposed to "The Chronicles of Narnia." I do think they will eventually reveal what this IMAX movie is going to be, and I do think it will be either one book, or half of one book, as opposed to a mix-match of two+ books.

I think it would be a shame not to have The Magician's Nephew title – it's always sounded intriguing to me. If that is the film coming up, I think it could be known mainly as Narnia: The Magician's Nephew. The overarching title which appears on the beginning credits of each series would probably be The Chronicles of Narnia, with 'The Chronicles of' in smaller font. (Did Walden do this? *Looks at DVD* Ah, they did. Of course that doesn't stop the new films/series doing that, too.)

I think the title should contain both the word Narnia and the title of the book that is to be adapted.  Whether Narnia or Chronicles of Narnia is used doesn’t matter that much to me.  People may want to read the book before or after viewing the movie. That is why it is important to include the name of the individual story so that people will know which book to look for in the bookstore or library.

Posted by: @decarus

They don't even show Narnia in MN until the end of the book.

With all due respect, that's factually inaccurate. I don't have the book with me at present, but I did a quick check online and it has 15 chapters; the creation of Narnia begins with chapter 8. Just over halfway through as far as the number of individual chapters are concerned. I'll check where it starts in terms of the actual number of pages in the book when I'm home. But there's no way I can see that the 8th of 15 chapters can be construed as "the end of the book". 

This is why it makes no sense to do MN first. I mean doing that already means the adaption of the series will not be good. I just cannot imagine what they are going to do to LWW if they do MN first. If people have problems with the Walden version then there is no hope that LWW will be good if it is the second movie made. It will be completely different than the book in so many ways unless they completely ignore the fact that the even made MN which they won't.

I think a few people have mentioned in recent discussions that some claims like these are opinions more than facts. We've had discussions on NarniaWeb before about the order of the films and whether it would make more sense for MN or LWW to be done first, and there have been sound and reasonable arguments put forward on both sides. For the record, I'm very much in favour of publication order, or certainly with starting with LWW, when it comes to reading the books — at least the first time one reads them — but I'm open to the idea of the new film series being made in chronological order. I don't know if that's "the right" choice, but it's the one that would probably make the most logical sense from a movie director's point of view, if the long-term plan is for all seven books to be adapted.

Getting back to the topic at hand... I also hope the upcoming film itself is not simply called Narnia. That wouldn't make sense, especially since we've been told Gerwig has been commissioned to make at least two films. Following it with Narnia 2 would be even more bizarre, especially since a lot of people are aware there's a whole series of books and they do all have individual titles. A series of films all just called Narnia 1, 2, 3 etc. would be very difficult to market as something exciting, I'm sure.

I'm guessing, like some others here, that "Narnia" is just the overall title of the series and the individual films will be called Narnia: The Magician's Nephew; Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and so on. "Narnia" itself is a very recognisable name and it's a lot less cumbersome (if also less grand) than "The Chronicles of Narnia", which is a bit of a mouthful if you want a short and catchy way of naming the whole series. Also the word "Chronicles" perhaps suggests written records of history, whereas of course these are movies.

But we won't know the answer to any of this for sure until more information officially comes out — which hopefully will be soon!