Hi, Yavar. 

I can sympathize with what you're saying since The Magician's Nephew and The Horse and his Boy are my favorite Narnia books and I can also agree with you that aspects of them being a good fit for Greta Gerwig specifically. (Well, I'd quibble that she seems to want to make more stories with female characters as the leads and Polly is more of a foil/sidekick, but I do think that there are things about MN that could really appeal to her and that might even be where her mind is right now since she mentioned it when making an analogy.) 

That being said, your argument hinges a lot on the Netflix series being a spinoff/continuation of the Walden Media series and I don't really want it to be that. There's something to be said for adapting stories that haven't been adapted yet. I feel like the new movies are going to have such a different feel to them, even if they do get Liam Neeson back, which I agree they could very well do, that smushed together they'll make for a weird, lumpy series. Sheesh, you could argue that the series already feels disconnected with the stylistic differences between the first two movies, the ones directed by Andrew Adamson, and the third one directed by Michael Apted. I'm not even sure I want Netflix to try to make their version of Narnia feel like the same world as the Walden one since that could hamper them artistically. 

I agree with you that if they do want to do that, The Silver Chair is a bad place to start since most nostalgia for the Walden movies is really nostalgia for their adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to which SC barely connects. I'm sure there are some people who love the 2010 Voyage of the Dawn Treader and would enjoy seeing a sequel to it, but, alas, I doubt there are enough of them for Netflix to count on them for a profit. We'll see. 

I did love the world created by those old Narnia movies, the first two anyway, and I'm sad we'll never get to see what their creators would have made of places like Harfang, Charn and Tashbaan. Then again, if I end up loving the world Netflix creates, I'll be sad to never see what they could have done with the books that Walden Media adapted.

Anyway, great to have you on the forum. 

@yavar-moradi 

First of all, I just want to say Welcome to the Forum Yavar, and I hope you stick around!  

Second, due to the busyness of my life, I only skimmed your post and read your title and that's what I'm replying to. But, I just wanted to actually reply to your post since you said no one said anything on your news comment. 

My personal opinion, I totally agree with your title. The Magician's Nephew is the adaptation I'm REALLY hoping Ms. Gerwig is doing because I think it fits her style very well. HHB is another excellent pick, but I'm not sure how well she'd be able to nail Aravis getting sliced up by Aslan and therefore not fighting in the battle. 

I've mentioned this elsewhere, that the one character I'm really nervous about Ms. Gerwig touching is Susan. I cannot see her interpreting that character correctly. But Polly, Jill, Lucy, and (most of) Aravis, I feel would be more accurately handled.  

It is interesting thought. I think @fantasia brings up a really good point about on how Greta Gerwig is going to be touching on Susan. I think a lot of us Narnia fans are concern about on how a film or series going to address Susan as being no longer a friend of Narnia. Then there's concern that Greta Gerwig might change her story (which hopefully it doesn't happened).

I would say The Magician's Nephew, because I think she could touch on family relationships. Digory is in a situation about his mother being close to death, and it's that unbreakable bond that a mother has with her child. Polly could be the friend that sticks by him when he's going through a tough time.

Thanks for welcoming me to the forum folks!

@fantasia, what aspect of Susan are you concerned about Gerwig tackling? I'm also unclear on why you think she wouldn't be able to handle that aspect of Aravis. I'm glad you agree on my pitch for which two books should be tackled by her. Once you do read my post, I wonder what you think of my suggestion of switching things up and having Edmund be the one who opts to stay in "our world" instead of her, to deal with the parallel of Skandar turning his back on acting (make believe/Narnia) to focus on politics (the "real world").

@jasmine_tarkheena, I'm actually a fan who would welcome a change to Susan. I'm not sure how her turning her back on Narnia is essential to the telling of the story. Frankly there are a number of things that bug me about The Last Battle... it's easily my least favorite Narnia book (though it has some amazing parts of course) and I would be the least bothered about certain liberties being taken with it in a film adaptation. I agree with your expansion on why a Gerwig/MN pairing would be a great choice.

@col-klink I'm going to have to disagree with you about Polly. I think she is the most important character in The Silver Chair (note: clearly the BEST character is Puddleglum, no contest!) because she is the one who undergoes a significant arc/character journey. Eustace got his significant character development in the previous book of course! So (not that he doesn't get any development at all, but...) he's in The Silver Chair primarily so that readers can have a familiar presence to maintain some continuity with the previous book, but Polly is the audience surrogate character in this case, the main character who has things to learn from her experiences in Narnia.

I'd also point out that I'm not advocating for a straight continuation of the Walden series, but phrased things as being a "soft reboot". Think the 2009 Star Trek which successfully reinvigorated that franchise (before the sequel squandered all that good will). That's still a reboot, even though Leonard Nimoy is in it! There can be new aesthetics! Narnia can look and feel different/fresh! But I can also see why it would make sense not to completely ignore the Walden films, given the popularity of the first film in particular, and the fact that we really don't need yet another LWW adaptation the way we need adaptations of several books which have never received one for the screen.

For the record, here's how I personally rank the Walden films:

1. Prince Caspian -- yes, there are some annoying elements like the Susan/Caspian romance and in retrospect I'm not sure switching to *those* accents at the last minute was really a good choice for the Calormenes. And I very much wish there had been more set up with Caspian's upbringing which was some of my favorite stuff in the book. But overall I was very impressed at how they fleshed out one of the more difficult-to-adapt novels, and it just connected with me more than LWW did. The battle scenes are a lot better done and much more justified, IMO. The bittersweet return to Narnia was perfectly captured. And I think the design aesthetics and score are the most advanced of the three films.

2. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe -- I adore the setup. Good casting (especially for Lucy, the most important character) and a great, magical introduction to Narnia. Great Tumnus/Lucy stuff. But certain other aspects never clicked with me, and the fantasy battle at the end was just too over the top LotR-wannabe, for my taste. They didn't adequately explain/depict how these kids could be instant experts in battle already, and it just felt like kiddie LotR.

3. Voyage of the Dawn Treader -- Ugh, what a frustrating movie. It reminds me a bit of Jackson's The Hobbit (only it's too short instead of being too bloated... if any Narnia book deserved a miniseries adaptation, it's this one!) in that there's so much terrible mixed in with the very good stuff. I still enjoyed the movie overall because Reepicheep and especially Eustace were done so well, and they are the most important part of the story for me. I liked the cameo for the older Pevensies and thought it was done brilliantly. Georgie was still wonderful in the film of course, and Skandar really came into his own as an actor I thought. And nice that the wonderful Ben Barnes (also now more age-appropriate) got to speak in his normal accent even though it's weirdly inconsistent with the previous film. But uh... multiple exciting chapters were just glossed over, action scenes were just weird, and the less said about the green mist, the better.

Yavar

@col-klinkI'm going to have to disagree with you about Polly. I think she is the most important character inThe Silver Chair(note: clearly the BEST character is Puddleglum, no contest!) because she is the one who undergoes a significant arc/character journey...Polly is the audience surrogate character in this case, the main character who has things to learn from her experiences in Narnia.

It sounds like you're confusing Polly with Jill and The Magician's Nephew with The Silver Chair. Does that mean we actually disagree about wanting Gerwig to do MN?  

Anyway, I agree about Jill being the protagonist of SC and the most dynamic character, but I don't see Gerwig wanting to do a story where the female lead redeems her past mistakes by submitting to the wishes of three male characters (Rilian, Puddleglum and Alsan) against her own. Then again, who knows? After all, much of Little Women is about the main characters admitting their flawed and needing to improve. It's still probably a more "empowering" story than The Silver Chair though.

@yavar-moradi 

I think you've got Polly confused with Jill; Jill is in SC and Polly is in MN.

You've got the Calormenes confused with the Telmarines. The Telmarines make an appearance in PC and VDT; the Calormenes make an appearance in HHB and LB.

I'm not sure where I would rank the Walden films. I would have to say I pretty much preferred the first two than the third (though I could have done without the melting river scene in LWW and the Caspian-Susan romance in PC). The third is more of a hit-miss, mostly a miss. And I have to agree about the Green Mist! Though I've liked the design of the Dawn Treader: they did such a good job on it!  

Posted by: @yavar-moradi

@fantasia, what aspect of Susan are you concerned about Gerwig tackling?

Gerwig is a bit of a self-proclaimed feminist. I don't want to restart that debate/discussion on your thread (there are other threads already on this site for it), but my concern is that she would have the attitude towards Susan that many modern day people have: that Lewis was sexist based on casting out a worldly Susan at the end of the book just because she finds herself. I just struggle to see Gerwig adapting Susan accurately.

Posted by: @yavar-moradi

I wonder what you think of my suggestion of switching things up and having Edmund be the one who opts to stay in "our world" instead of her, to deal with the parallel of Skandar turning his back on acting (make believe/Narnia) to focus on politics (the "real world").

A couple thoughts. One, I personally want nothing to do with the Walden movies/actors. I know there are still a handful of people who still want to tie-in to those movies, but I'm adamantly opposed to it. I want a clean slate/fresh start for a new generation of Narnia-lovers.  
But speaking of just switching Susan and Edmund's fates, for it to work in my eyes, it would have to be a 100% switch from beginning of the Chronicles to the end. Susan is the one who betrays the siblings, who Aslan dies for, who sticks up for Lucy in PC while Edmund whines and complains. And I just don't see the point of doing so myself. It would only serve to anger fans and really accomplish nothing. 

Posted by: @fantasia

Posted by: @yavar-moradi

I wonder what you think of my suggestion of switching things up and having Edmund be the one who opts to stay in "our world" instead of her, to deal with the parallel of Skandar turning his back on acting (make believe/Narnia) to focus on politics (the "real world").

A couple thoughts. One, I personally want nothing to do with the Walden movies/actors. I know there are still a handful of people who still want to tie-in to those movies, but I'm adamantly opposed to it. I want a clean slate/fresh start for a new generation of Narnia-lovers.  
But speaking of just switching Susan and Edmund's fates, for it to work in my eyes, it would have to be a 100% switch from beginning of the Chronicles to the end. Susan is the one who betrays the siblings, who Aslan dies for, who sticks up for Lucy in PC while Edmund whines and complains. And I just don't see the point of doing so myself. It would only serve to anger fans and really accomplish nothing. 

Besides which, it would probably come across as if the writers were angry at Skandar Keynes for not returning for the series finale and portraying his character negatively out of spite. That's not the impression anyone wants to create and would make a movie that's already going to be controversial more so. 

Anyhow, that’s my pitch of why those two should be the ones Gerwig works on, allowing The Silver Chair and The Last Battle to finish the “soft reboot” Netflix film series with at least a bit of chronological character/story continuity between them.

Hi Yavar (and welcome!)

Interesting ideas, and I would love to see both MN and HHB made into films or series, whether by Gerwig or anyone else who (hopefully) knows how to tell a good story on the screen. But as we've been discussing just recently in one of the other forum threads here, I cannot see Netflix trying to revive the Walden series in any way. As someone else (Fantasia, I think) just said, why on earth would they want to pick up another company's 15-20-year-old baggage — especially considering the first Walden film did very well but by the time they'd done the third, the series was floundering and it ground to a halt after that? It doesn't make any sense, and the recent comments from a Netflix executive have pretty much implicitly confirmed that they will be starting afresh with the whole series, not rebooting someone else's efforts.

We've had Gerwig's own recent comment about her being "in the Wood between the Worlds", as a metaphorical reference to where she is in her creative process, which some have taken as a hint that she's working on MN; we've had Scott Stuber name-drop LWW as "kind of the preeminent one", which others have read as a hint that that's the one they intend to do first. I still reckon it could be either and we won't know until the official announcement is made, but I'm certain it will be one or the other of those two.

If they do start with MN, I'd expect them to do LWW second; if they start with LWW, they could potentially jump back in time to follow it with MN as the "how it all began" prequel, or they could move on to HHB (keeping the same adult actors that are used for the grown-up Pevensies at the end of LWW), or even stick to publication order and follow LWW with PC, as the Walden series (and indeed the BBC) did. There are lots of possibilities, which could be what Stuber was getting at with his slightly oddball comment about Gerwig and Pascal working on "how to break the whole arc" of the series — trying to figure out where best to start from and where to take it in order to get the overall effect they want, since there are two established orders for reading the original books (publication and chronological) and they each produce a somewhat different impression of Narnia's story as a whole.

(Edited to add: Just remembered though, as I mentioned elsewhere, if they do make LWW first, that then pretty much locks them into doing PC, VDT and SC within the next few years, if they're going to be consistent with the ages of the child characters who feature over those four books. It doesn't mean they couldn't also film MN during the same time period, since it has different actors — other than Jadis / the White Witch and possibly a cameo appearance from adult Digory / the Professor at the end of MN, to show that's who he is — but that might be a few too many balls to juggle at once, so to speak.)

Posted by: @fantasia

Gerwig is a bit of a self-proclaimed feminist. I don't want to restart that debate/discussion on your thread (there are other threads already on this site for it), but my concern is that she would have the attitude towards Susan that many modern day people have: that Lewis was sexist based on casting out a worldly Susan at the end of the book just because she finds herself. I just struggle to see Gerwig adapting Susan accurately.

I agree this isn't the place to restart that debate (and I'm happy to move onto one of the other threads if it's going to continue), but can I please just point out once again that being "a self-proclaimed feminist" does not automatically mean that Greta Gerwig has a pre-determined (and negative) attitude towards Susan and her fate? There are almost as many variations of feminism as there are variations of Christianity (dare I say it  ), and Susan's character arc isn't actually about her "finding herself" as an adult woman at all — it's about her rejecting something wonderful that she knows to be true from experience (the reality of Narnia) because it doesn't fit in with the way peer pressure and worldly stereotypes of "being grown up" are pushing her to think. Given that Gerwig is obviously sensitive to the negative sides of women's experiences as well as the positive ones, it's possible she could keep Susan's fate essentially as it is in the books, but expand on it — give us more perspective on why Susan was drawn away from Narnia and why she made the choices she did. (If Gerwig directs Netflix's version of The Last Battle or has any influence over the scripting, which we don't know yet that she will. Assuming the series gets that far at all!!)

@yavar-moradi I don't necessarily disagree with your arguments in favour of either book, however ultimately for me it comes down to whether either story has a greater allure for Greta Gerwig than LWW, which I don't think they do. You can find my comments on that matter over in the other thread though.

@icarus I agree with the reasons you mentioned in the other thread for why Gerwig might not want to adapt those books, but I feel like you're assuming too easily that she would be most attracted to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I mean..she definitely could be. It's many people's favorite book in the series and I understand if it's yours. But it's not everybody's favorite. I feel it's a tad overhyped and the things you described as likely to appeal to Gerwig (like several scenes being shown from a girl's perspective or having to do with growing up) are not actually that unique either for a Narnia book or for stories in general. From what I understand, modern feminists aren't so much wishing for more movies with female leads (they have those already) they want (a) more movies written or directed by women and (b) more movies about relationships between women. I guess you could say LWW has the relationships between Lucy and Susan and between them and Mrs. Beaver but those aren't developed that deeply.