The wardrobe was only the beginning. Netflix has released the first official trailer for Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, giving audiences their first extended look at Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of C. S. Lewis’ fantasy novel and the creation of the magical world that has captivated readers for generations.
If you’re like me, someone who has never watched any of the past Narnia movies, this certainly sounds like the best place to start, and who better to hold our hand through this world than the director who gave us Barbie? The trailer is an overwhelming wallop of magic that certainly made me sit up and take notice.
Set to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” the trailer opens on a familiar piece of Narnia imagery before taking us to London, where young Digory and Polly stumble into an adventure that stretches far beyond their own world. Their discovery of magical rings leads them into the Wood Between the Worlds, a mysterious place connecting different realities.
From there, things get considerably stranger. The footage offers a glimpse of Jadis, the sorceress who becomes known as the White Witch, played by Emma Mackey. Daniel Craig appears as Digory’s Uncle Andrew, whose experiments with magic set the story in motion. The trailer also offers a first proper look at Aslan, voiced by Meryl Streep, as the film builds toward the creation of Narnia itself.
Newcomers David McKenna and Beatrice Campbell play Digory and Polly, with Carey Mulligan, Ciarán Hinds, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Denise Gough and Susan Wokoma rounding out the cast. Gerwig wrote and directed the film, which adapts The Magician’s Nephew, first published in 1955. Although the novel was released after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in the chronology of the series, its story takes place earlier, revealing how Narnia came to exist.
The trailer’s emphasis on music and cosmic imagery suggests that Gerwig is taking a suitably ambitious approach to the story’s most fantastical elements. Lewis’ tale begins with children discovering a way to travel between worlds, but its ultimate destination is the birth of an entire universe.
Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew opens in theaters worldwide on February 12, 2027, with IMAX-only sneak previews beginning February 10. The film will arrive on Netflix on April 2, 2027.
