Netflix is giving Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew” a full, wide global theatrical release, the first such rollout in the streamer’s history. The company confirmed last Friday that the movie will open in IMAX and standard theaters worldwide on February 12, with sneak previews on IMAX screens starting February 10. It hits Netflix on April 2.
That’s a roughly seven-week theatrical window before the streaming drop.
The new dates push the film out of its old Thanksgiving slot. Deadline reported that an on-set injury to a cast member caused a six-week production delay, which made the original November 26 release impossible. Netflix used the gap to renegotiate the rollout. IMAX called the change something that gives the picture “a full theatrical window.” AMC, which has spent the last few months running one-off Netflix events including the “Stranger Things” finale and “KPop Demon Hunters,” has said it wants more collaborations.
Gerwig pushed for the theatrical run from the start. The original deal yielded a two-week IMAX exclusive before streaming. The new plan expands that to a wide release across all the major chains.
The cast is now official. Newcomers David McKenna and Beatrice Campbell play Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer. McKenna is a 13-year-old from Belfast who played Piggy in the BBC’s “Lord of the Flies.” Campbell appeared in Wes Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme” and the Disney+ series “The Stolen Girl.” Emma Mackey is Jadis, the White Witch. Daniel Craig is Uncle Andrew. Carey Mulligan plays Mabel Kirke, Digory’s dying mother. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Ciarán Hinds, Denise Gough, and Susan Wokoma round out the principal ensemble. Meryl Streep voices Aslan.
“I was a child when I first read ‘The Magician’s Nephew,’ and I fell in love with the gorgeously improbable but completely brilliant concept of a cosmic lion singing the world of Narnia to life,” Gerwig said in the Netflix statement. “It is the honor of a lifetime to be asked to imagine it into being.”
This is Gerwig’s first directing job since “Barbie,” which earned more than $1.4 billion globally in 2023. She also wrote the screenplay. Filming wrapped on January 31 after roughly six months of production, with location shoots around London’s Bank Station and the Royal Exchange, plus Castlefield in Manchester, and stage work at Shepperton and Longcross.
The adaptation moves the story from C.S. Lewis’s 1900 Victorian London setting to 1955, the year the book was actually published. Producer Mark Gordon, speaking on “The Gary and Kenny Show” podcast last week, described the film as a “four-quadrant” picture aiming for a PG rating, with broad family appeal as the goal. The Gerwig “Barbie” team is largely back. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, costume designer Jacqueline Durran, and composers Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt are all on board. Production designer James Chinlund of “The Batman” handled the world-building.
Opening weekend competition includes Sony TriStar’s “The Nightingale,” the WWII drama starring Dakota and Elle Fanning in the sisters’ first film together, and an untitled K-pop project from Paramount and director Benson Lee. Netflix says exclusive IMAX previews of “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew” begin February 10, with the wide theatrical release two days later.
