After reading your sentiments on the article I refrained myself from reading it and skipped to the actors that the writer felt would suit the Pevensie's when recasting takes place. I was only familiar with the actresses from Bridgerton and Damsel since I watched those shows already. They are good choicies, especially the actress for Lucy.

I don't watch Bridgerton, but I think the actress they suggested for Susan looks the part. (Well, I don't have a super specific image of each character in my mind, but I feel like if I did have one for Susan, it would look like that actress.) 

Here's another Screen Rant article that just came up in my phone's news feed: 10 Problems with the Chronicles of Narnia that Greta Gerwig's Movies Must Fix

I don't agree with a lot of things in this article — I suspect some of it is more to do with the writer's personal tastes and biases than objective "problems" as such — and there's the usual misapplication of the term "allegory" and the perennial raising of the Problem of Susan. But there are a few reasonable points in there, and some of these things may indeed be issues for viewers who are less familiar with the books.

I suspect the writer of the article isn't thoroughly familiar with the books either — anyone who was, would hit on more genuine issues like the considerable inconsistencies between some of the books — and there's also the fact that Gerwig so far has only been asked to do two films, as far as we know, so there's quite some likelihood that the entire Netflix Narnia franchise will have more than one director, if they do end up adapting all the books. But it's interesting to read others' opinions and ideas on it, even if I don't think they're on the mark, and at least commentators out there are getting interested in the new version of Narnia and talking about it! 

@courtenay 

This is all really interesting. Though I actually agree that I don't necessarily agree with all of these.

For the order issue, while a lot of us are set on reading the series in publication order, the same rule doesn't have to apply to a movie. Even if it was made in chronological order, we could still probably watch them in publication order if we want (my set of the books are numbered chronologically, though I could still read them in publication order).

I would agree that it can be hard to turn a book (not just Narnia but any book) into a movie. There are lot of challenges, such as some things that would have to be expanded on, cut out, or change.

I would say that The Last Battle would certainly take the most risk, given the dark tone of the book. Then another, how would they address Susan no longer being afraid of Narnia? Would they leave her out all together or have her somehow make a brief appearance?

I'm not so sure if I would want The Horse And His Boy to be skipped, though I can see how hard it would be to do a side story. If Narnia was to be done in the style of Star Wars, then it could possibly be titled, The Horse And His Boy: A Narnia Story. Then again, I don't know.

It's a really interesting article, though I'm not sure I would entirely agree with all that.

Here's an article that just came up in my news feed, advocating for The Magician's Nephew as the first instalment in the new series: Netflix's 'Chronicles of Narnia' Adaptation Needs to Start With This Book

Of course, all this is pretty much old hat for those of us who've been weighing up the LWW-vs-MN question for months if not years! But the article at least seems to be by someone who has read the books and who isn't pushing any highly personal opinions or blatant misconceptions about them. For readers of this article who haven't read all seven Chronicles and perhaps are only familiar with Narnia from previous screen adaptations, this could be very intriguing and maybe it'll induce more people to read MN (and hopefully the rest of the series) in anticipation! (It does contain some spoilers, like Digory being the Professor from LWW, or Aslan singing Narnia into being, but there's nothing there that gives away any substantial amount of the plot.) 

Here's another article that's come up in my news feed: Greta Gerwig's Chronicles Of Narnia Movies Have A Challenge Other Fantasy Series Like LOTR Didn't Face

I was intrigued, but the "challenge" in question is simply that the books are quite short and therefore — according to this writer — they don't provide enough material for a substantial movie, leading to the question of whether the new adaptations should either add more to the stories to flesh them out, or else combine two of them into one film.

I really shudder at the "two in one" idea — all the individual books are complete in themselves and each of them has a distinct and unique plot, so combining two of them into one long film could only end up feeling like two separate stories tacked together. The BBC's adaptation of PC and VDT was presented in the video release as if these were two stories in one, but as they were originally screened episodically on TV — two half-hour episodes for PC, four for VDT — they still came across as two separate stories with a link between them (at the end of PC, Edmund and Lucy go to stay with Eustace and the episode ends with them being drawn into the painting of the ship). In the cinema, that sort of thing really wouldn't work.

On the other hand, are the original stories really so short that they need a lot of padding out?? I wouldn't have thought so. LWW is one of the shortest and simplest books in the series, and the BBC managed to do it in 6 episodes — 3 hours in total — without adding anything to the plot that isn't in the original book. The Walden movie version is about 2 hours and 20 minutes and, while it does spend a bit of time on the invented diversion with the fox, doesn't otherwise stray substantially from the plot as given in the book. And I can't see anything wrong with the new Narnia adaptations being relatively short, as long as they keep in all the important elements of the original stories. Shorter movies are easier to sit through in the cinema, for a start! 

@courtenay I agree that there's enough story in each individual Narnia book to make one movie. Not every film has to have a super complicated plot. I also think there's another reason they wouldn't want to combine stories. Fantasy movies are expensive and doing two in one would mean twice as many locations, twice as many extras, twice as many special effects. (Even if they decided to do a stylistic throwback and use old fashioned special effects, that would still be super expensive. In fact, it might be more so since it might be harder to get people who can do those effects.) 

BTW, I wanted to say something about ScreenRant.com. From what I've gathered on the internet, it's not a highly respected site. They make their writers churn out five articles a week, whether they have anything interesting to say or not and it's a lot of clickbait. It wouldn't surprise me if the people who wrote the articles about Narnia never read the actual books but just googled "common opinions about Narnia" and hastily compiled the results.  

@col-klink Yeah, I'd noticed ScreenRant articles rarely have any real substance to them. I did find at least one article there a while back that gave me the impression that the writer was reasonably familiar with the books (I posted it above), which was refreshing, but even then, they could have just trawled the internet for info and opinions about the stories, as you say.

I don't deliberately go combing ScreenRant for information — it's just that it occasionally comes up in the news feed on my phone, so when it shows something about Narnia, I read it. But even more reputable websites don't have much news about the upcoming Narnia adaptations so far, as we've all noticed. Gerwig and Netflix in general are keeping their cards close to their chests, so to speak, so nearly everything that's been said about the whole project is still speculation at best.