Ben Barnes first went to Narnia in 2008, when he starred as Prince Caspian in Disney and Walden Media’s film series. Now Greta Gerwig is bringing C.S. Lewis’s world back in Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, and Barnes has watched the new film’s trailer and given it his blessing.
Speaking with ScreenRant in an interview published Tuesday, Barnes said “the trailer looks great,” and that he is “always a fan of directors who are real visionaries” who have “clear ideas about what they want to do.”
He saved some of his warmest words for where Gerwig is starting. Instead of opening with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, her series begins with The Magician’s Nephew, the prequel that tells how Narnia was created. Barnes called that starting point a “brilliant idea,” then praised the company she has assembled for it:
“I think she’s got a great eye for casting. I loved Emma Mackey in Sex Education, I thought she was brilliant. Obviously, Daniel Craig’s brilliant in everything. So, yeah, I’m really excited to see it. Those stories are beautiful, but also, every generation needs to reinterpret things, and pull out of stories what seems visceral and important, and present it in a way that is visually exciting, and I think we can rely on her to do that.”
Barnes is not the only familiar face cheering the new film on. Anna Popplewell, who played Susan Pevensie opposite him, reacted to the trailer at Comic Con Brussels in late October. “I think it looks really exciting,” she said. “It looks very different from the world that we created in our adaptation and I think I would expect that from Greta Gerwig. She’s such a wonderful director and writer, but it would be very surprising if she didn’t have her own take on Narnia. The music is amazing . . . I can’t wait to watch it.” The music she means is Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” licensed for a film for the first time and woven through the trailer TDN covered last month.
The kind words land at a moment when Gerwig’s film is drawing both excitement and argument, and TDN has already made the case that she deserves a fair hearing before the film opens. Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew arrives in theaters on February 12, 2027, with IMAX previews from February 10, and streams on Netflix starting April 2, 2027. Newcomers David McKenna and Beatrice Campbell star as Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, with Emma Mackey as Jadis, Daniel Craig as Uncle Andrew, Carey Mulligan as Mabel Kirke and Meryl Streep as the voice of Aslan.
Barnes, meanwhile, sat down with ScreenRant to talk about season 2 of The Institute, the Stephen King series in which he stars as Tim Jamieson.