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 [edited for accuracy] near the end of chapter 7. 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. [Edited to add] My copy has 171 pages and Aslan's creation song begins (and the stars appear) on p. 93, so yes, we're in Narnia from just a little over halfway through the story. There's really no way that 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!  

Hmm, I don't know how I would feel about the title just being "Narnia" because it almost sounds just too generic. I would much rather be called The Chronicles of Narnia. For certain, I would certainly not want the title of "Narnia" to be taken out and just be called "The Magician's Nephew" or "The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe", whatever. It would almost be like trying to take the title of Lord of the Rings out and just call it "The Fellowship of the Ring" or trying to take out the title of Harry Potter and just call it "The Chamber of Secrets".

So I would think The Chronicles of Narnia would make sense. Well, given it's most likely they don't have the rights to the logo that the BBC TV series or that the Walden films used, they will have to come up with their own logo. I think that will be interesting to see what logo they come up with, even if the title was just "Narnia".

I do hope the title is not just going to be "Narnia" as @col-klink wrote, the idea of sequels being "Narnia 2" and "Narnia 3" etc. is a horrible and boring one - besides, I noticed some people did refer to PC and VDT as that when they came out in cinemas despite their full names when the Walden series was being released.  I am hoping - like most of the other comments in this thread that "Narnia" is being used as the overall title, and hopefully they'll even stick to "The Chronicles of Narnia".  I also like the idea (and am hopeful) that @fantasia wrote - that the books will be films and the series will be spin-offs.

If the title does end up simply being 'Narnia', I think Gerwig is more likely to be adapting LWW than MN. For mainstream audiences, Narnia = LWW. I think Netflix would try and distinguish itself a bit more with a unique title if it were The Magician's Nephew.

One of the things I had been thinking about for a while, is Netflix's general approach to marketing.

In simple terms, their overall strategy seems to be that when you first hear about something Netflix related, you should be able to watch it straight away on Netflix.

Thus one week everyone is suddenly talking about "Squid Game", and so you go straight to Netflix to watch it. Next week something like "Baby Reindeer" comes out of nowhere and is the talk of the town. But again, you can go straight to Netflix and watch it.

No build up, no hype. Just rely upon instant viral buzz upon release to generate huge hits.

As such, I'd been very willing to let them off on the overall lack of detail about almost everything to do with this project, such as the title. (i.e. if you want to generate sudden interest at the moment of release, you need a degree of secrecy beforehand)

With the IMAX deal however, all of that has now changed - we are now back in the mode of "appointment viewing". Going to the cinema is something they will want (and need) people to book and pre-plan for in the traditional cinema marketing manner.

Therefore, with every passing day I struggle to believe there is going to be a last minute switch-a-roo on the title.

Maybe it's no different to announcing a new "Star Wars" or a "Harry Potter" film - it's the brand name that people are showing up for, not the subtitle, but I still feel like we are in the "Big Announcement" phase right now, and they are telling us quite clearly to set out calendars for "Narnia" on Thanksgiving 2026.

If ever there was a time to confirm a title as simple as LWW or MN, it would be now... And yet they haven't.

I don’t think they should ever call it Narnia One or Narnia Two or something like that since there are too many movies that are numbered. I think it is much better to have Narnia or Chronicles of Narnia followed by the title of the book the movie is based on.  I don’t care much for having numbers in the title, although I can understand why it was done for the Star Trek films.  In that case it was done to appeal to the specific audience who were fans of the television series.

I still really can't quite believe the title of this film is going to be just "Narnia", even though it's strange that they're not even dropping a hint of what else it could be or which book is being adapted. The name on its own is pretty recognisable, and nearly everyone will know it's the fantasy world in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the other stories in that series, even though the name Narnia doesn't feature in any of the book titles.*

But especially thanks to Walden having done three films, there's plenty of awareness out there that there is more than one Narnia story, even among people who've never read the books or can't remember how many there are or what all the titles are. So if a new movie is released and it really is just called Narnia, that's surely heading for a marketing disaster. I mean... Narnia what??  

It'd be as strange as doing a new adaptation of Tolkien's world — either true to his actual writings or, as the fashion currently is, elaborate fan-fic — and calling it Middle-earth. People are just going to be baffled as to what it's about and which book(s) it covers and what on earth is going on. Of course the lack of specificity in the title might encourage people to watch it and find out, but — if this really is happening — it just seems a totally bizarre choice. There's not enough in just the word "Narnia" to tell people why they ought to watch this film.

I'm guessing that, for whatever reason, Gerwig and Netflix are still keeping their cards close to their chests, so to speak, and at some stage — hopefully very soon — it will be revealed that the full title is Narnia: The Magician's Nephew or Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Putting "Narnia" at the start of every title does make sense, as a sort of unifying brand name — especially because, again, none of the book titles mention Narnia itself, and there's no pattern that the seven titles follow that makes it obvious they're all from the same series, so the less-well-known ones (including MN) may not be immediately recognisable to the general public. So that's what my money's on (proverbially... I can't afford to gamble even if I wanted to), but we can only wait and see.

* With one sort-of exception... Prince Caspian technically is subtitled The Return to Narnia, but that's never been printed on the cover in any edition.