Greta Gerwig explained her casting logic for the talking lion at the centre of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, which splits its run between IMAX and Netflix next year.
Meryl Streep is Aslan. Greta Gerwig confirmed the casting in a new Empire interview, and the reasoning behind it is very Gerwig: she wanted gravitas without self-seriousness, wisdom without cynicism, and a face that could hold both grief and delight in the same shot.
"I wanted someone who was profound but not pretentious, who had gravitas but not morose self-seriousness," Gerwig told the magazine. "I wanted someone who was older than 70, so there was a wisdom of experience, but who also had the capacity of fresh wonder, like a child." She added the obvious kicker: she wanted one of the greatest actors alive, and, as she put it, that list isn't long.
Streep and Gerwig go back to 2019's Little Women, so this isn't a cold call. But the visual choice attached to the character is the real surprise here. Concept art shared by Empire, credited to artist Jaime Jones, shows Aslan with a red stripe across his face and two different-coloured eyes, a direct nod to David Bowie. Gerwig said she built the whole film around the idea of Narnia as a rock opera.
"Narnia is literally a world made out of music," she said. "It is a world sung to life by Aslan, and rock 'n' roll to me felt like a world made out of music."
A cast stacked with heavyweights
Alongside the Streep reveal, Empire also put out the first image of Emma Mackey as the White Witch. The rest of the ensemble is stacked: David McKenna, Beatrice Campbell, Carey Mulligan and Ciarán Hinds lead the film, with Daniel Craig, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Denise Gough and Susan Wokoma filling out the supporting cast.
Gerwig is directing from her own script, adapting C.S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew for the screen for the first time. In a separate statement carried by JoBlo, she talked about reading the book as a kid and falling for "the gorgeously improbable but completely brilliant concept of a cosmic lion singing the world of Narnia to life," calling the job of bringing it to screen the honour of a lifetime.
Theatres first, then Netflix
The release plan is unusual for a Netflix production. IMAX previews start February 10, 2027, with a full theatrical run beginning February 12 that runs wide globally. The streaming release doesn't land until April 2, meaning Gerwig has locked in a genuinely long theatrical window before the film moves to the platform that's actually financing it.
Whether audiences show up in theatres for a Netflix title in that gap is the question the streamer is betting real money on. Between the Bowie-coded lion and a cast this deep, Narnia: The Magician's Nephew is shaping up as the test case for how far Netflix will let a filmmaker push a theatrical run before pulling the film home.
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