We have been through the wardrobe before. We have sailed on the Dawn Treader, fought alongside Prince Caspian and watched more than one generation of children discover that an ordinary-looking wardrobe can contain an entire world. But when Greta Gerwig brings The Chronicles of Narnia back to cinemas in 2027, she is not starting with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe again.

She is taking us all the way back to the beginning. Netflix has officially confirmed that Gerwig’s first Narnia film is Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, and this will be the first screen adaptation of C. S. Lewis’s 1955 novel. The film will receive IMAX previews on 10 February 2027, open widely in cinemas on 12 February and then arrive on Netflix on 2 April.

For a franchise that has been adapted for television, animation, radio and major Hollywood movies for nearly 60 years, that is surprisingly unexplored territory.

Before the wardrobe

The Magician’s Nephew was the sixth Narnia book published, arriving in 1955, five years after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Chronologically, however, it comes first. This is the story of how Narnia begins.

It follows Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, two children in Edwardian London who become caught up in the experiments of Digory’s eccentric Uncle Andrew. Magical rings allow them to travel between worlds through a strange place known as the Wood Between the Worlds.

Their journey eventually brings them into contact with Jadis, the woman who will become the White Witch.

Most importantly, they witness the creation of Narnia itself.

For anyone who has ever wondered where the famous lamp-post came from, why a wardrobe could become a doorway to another world or what Narnia looked like before Lucy Pevensie arrived there, this is the book that begins answering those questions.

Netflix’s official description calls the film an origin story about the creation of Narnia.

Greta Gerwig has been thinking about this story since childhood

Gerwig is both writing and directing the adaptation. She has explained that The Magician’s Nephew captured her imagination when she was young, particularly the extraordinary idea of Aslan singing Narnia into existence.

That image is at the centre of Lewis’s creation story. Narnia does not begin with machinery, armies or some enormous magical explosion. It begins with music. Gerwig has described that idea of a universe being created through song as something that stayed with her long before she became a filmmaker.

That makes The Magician’s Nephew a particularly interesting choice for the director of Lady Bird, Little Women and Barbie.

She is not being handed another remake of something audiences already know scene by scene. She gets to establish what Narnia looks, sounds and feels like from its first moments.

We now know who is going through the Wood Between the Worlds

Newcomers David McKenna and Beatrice Campbell lead the film as Digory and Polly. Daniel Craig plays Digory’s magician uncle, Andrew. And Emma Mackey is Jadis. That last casting choice should immediately interest anyone familiar with the books.

Jadis is not simply “the White Witch before The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”. The Magician’s Nephew allows us to encounter her in another world and understand that her history stretches far beyond the snowy Narnia where the Pevensie children eventually meet her.

The wider cast includes Carey Mulligan, Ciarán Hinds, Meryl Streep, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Denise Gough and Susan Wokoma. Netflix has not publicly identified every role, so it is worth resisting some of the fan casting assumptions currently circulating online.

The score comes from Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, who previously worked with Gerwig on Barbie, while George Drakoulias is handling music supervision.

For a film about a world literally being sung into existence, the music may be one of the most important creative choices in the entire production.

Narnia has been on television since 1967

This new version enters a much longer adaptation history than the 2005 films might suggest.  The first television adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe aired in 1967 as a ten-part serial. An animated version followed in 1979, produced by Bill Melendez and the Children’s Television Workshop. It won the Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program.

Then came the version many older NerdiPop readers may remember especially fondly. Between 1988 and 1990, the BBC adapted The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair as live-action television serials.

The production values may look wonderfully old-school now, but for a generation of viewers, that puppet and animatronic Narnia was Narnia.

Then Hollywood opened the wardrobe

In 2005, Walden Media and Disney launched The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Skandar Keynes and Georgie Henley played the Pevensie siblings, Tilda Swinton became the White Witch and Liam Neeson voiced Aslan.

It was followed by Prince Caspian in 2008 and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in 2010.

And then the cinematic journey stopped.

Plans for further films came and went, but The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew and The Last Battle never became part of that series.

That makes Netflix’s decision particularly significant.

Instead of simply attempting the Pevensie story again, Gerwig is taking audiences somewhere none of the previous screen versions ever reached.

And Netflix is treating this like a cinema event

Despite being a Netflix film, The Magician’s Nephew is not going directly to streaming.

The film receives exclusive IMAX previews on 10 February 2027, followed by a worldwide theatrical release on 12 February.

It will then arrive on Netflix on 2 April 2027.

Netflix is handling North American distribution, while Sony Pictures Entertainment will distribute the film outside North America.

That release strategy suggests the scale Netflix and Gerwig are aiming for.

This is not being positioned simply as another fantasy title to appear quietly on the Netflix homepage on a Friday morning.

They want people to walk into Narnia through a cinema screen.

The most interesting part is what we have not seen before

There is always a risk when an enormously familiar property returns.

Do we really need another wardrobe opening?

Another Mr Tumnus meeting Lucy under the lamp-post?

Another battle against the White Witch?

But The Magician’s Nephew avoids that problem almost completely.

We have never seen Digory and Polly’s adventure given a major screen adaptation.

We have never seen Charn properly realised.

We have never watched Narnia being created on screen as the central event of a film.

And we have never had an entire Narnia movie built around how all those familiar pieces came to exist.

More than 75 years after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was first published, audiences are finally being shown how the wardrobe became magical in the first place.

On 12 February 2027, the door opens again.

This time, we are going through it before Lucy ever did.