Re Aslan.. I think I'm passing into the 'acceptance' stage. Although every so often I'll experience the whole grief cycle again! 

As to what it means for the whole project, I know producers were keen initially to break the whole arc of Narnia, but I'm less optimistic now than I was that we'll see every/most Narnia stories adapted. I feel like this project will pique quickly in public consciousness and then fade once again.

I'm still interested in what the overall plan is, I need details! As I've said before, anyone trying to adapt Narnia has my attention - even if I wouldn't choose their approach, I wish them well.

What does everyone else think?

I'm scared. I loved the Walden Media films, despite their flaws. Dawn Treader stank as both an adaptation and a film, but besides that, they were amazing. Meanwhile, this seems to be directly spitting in the face of Lewis and Christianity. After all, Aslan is a direct parallel to Jesus Christ--who is referred to as the Son of God.

I've dropped back from formerly "cautiously optimistic" overall to "neutral / wait and see", thanks to the recent casting rumour about Aslan. I won't say I'm outright pessimistic, simply because we still don't know exactly what's going to happen and I don't think it's ever fair to make one's mind up before one has enough information to do so.

What floored me about the Meryl Streep rumour is that absolutely everything Greta Gerwig had said publicly about her own regard for Narnia and for C.S. Lewis seemed to show a lot of respect for the original story and the original author. There was absolutely nothing from her or other people involved that suggested "Oh, well, of course we're going to make some changes to keep this story fresh and relevant and relatable to today's audiences", or anything else of the sort.

And then... this bombshell drops, which is just so at odds with what we've heard so far that at first I thought it could only be an April Fool's joke, designed to get Narnia traditionalists all riled up. But as the days go on and we still have no clarification either way, it's just becoming baffling.

In fact, from what we already know, two previous attempts at continuing or restarting a Narnia film franchise have been derailed in the recent past, at least partly because there were "modernising" changes proposed. The Silver Chair reportedly got ditched because they were planning to make Jill Pole a girl-power action heroine, and the C.S. Lewis Estate objected; Matthew Aldrich, who was originally announced as the "creative architect" of Netflix's Narnia project in 2019, has let on that one of the main reasons he lost that gig was because those in charge didn't agree with his proposal to "try to sort of update them [the books] in some fun ways."

So, basically, if girl power and fun updating didn't get the go-ahead, and yet possibly a female Aslan has... what are we supposed to think?? Or if that rumour is untrue, why doesn't someone at Netflix just step up and say so?

And that's where I am at the moment. Just too completely baffled to know whether to be hopeful or horrified!!  

I voted for "pessimistic", but tbh i think it's somewhere between that and neutral.

I was never enthusiastic about the Netflix adaptation, not because i thought it was doomed to failure or anything, but because really good adaptations are extremely rare. The BBC adaptations did manage to convey a subtle magical feeling (probably due more to the lens of childhood than anything), but i don't think they'd do that for me if i watched as an adult. I really enjoyed Walden's LWW the first couple times i watched it, but i don't care very much for it now, and even less for PC; never saw VotDT and don't intend to. Netflix didn't seem likely to do notably better than either, and potentially could be much worse. That latter possibility seems even higher now, but still not 100% confirmed.