Netflix Drops First Trailer for Greta Gerwig's Narnia Film

Netflix has released the first trailer for Greta Gerwig's adaptation of The Magician's Nephew, giving audiences their opening look at her take on CS Lewis's Narnia.

The trailer reveals the fantasy epic's visual direction and confirms its leading cast: Daniel Craig, Carey Mulligan and Meryl Streep. For Gerwig, the film marks her first project since establishing herself as a director of major literary adaptations, and it pairs her with the three most recognizable names in the production.

Why start with The Magician's Nephew?

Lewis wrote The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe first, but The Magician's Nephew sits earliest in the series' internal chronology. It's the book that explains how Narnia came to be — the origin story of the wardrobe itself. By adapting it first, Gerwig and Netflix are building the franchise from its foundations rather than repeating the entry point audiences already know from earlier film versions.

That choice signals a degree of ambition. A chronological start means the series can unspool in narrative order across future installments, with the world-creation material of The Magician's Nephew doing the groundwork.

What does the trailer actually show?

Netflix is billing the release as a first look at Gerwig's vision for Lewis's magical world. The trailer introduces that vision alongside the confirmed cast. Craig, Mulligan and Streep anchor the ensemble, though the trailer itself is the studio's controlled preview — a standard teaser function, designed to establish tone and scale before a fuller marketing rollout.

What does this change for Netflix?

The streaming platform now holds the marquee fantasy property it has been developing with Gerwig, and the trailer is the first concrete evidence of what that partnership produced. Narnia gives Netflix a family-friendly franchise with a built-in readership spanning generations of Lewis fans, at a moment when sustained, multi-film intellectual property is the industry's most valuable commodity.

For Gerwig, the stakes run the other direction. She's translating a canon millions of readers hold dear, and the first trailer is where that judgment begins. The casting alone — Craig, Mulligan, Streep — tells you Netflix committed serious resources to matching her vision.

The trailer marks the public start of the film's campaign. Next comes the question every adaptation faces: whether Gerwig's Narnia earns the trust the trailer is asking audiences to extend.