Barbie director Greta Gerwig “terrified” of making Narnia movies for Netflix

Written by C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia is a seven-book series about a group of kids who travel through a wardrobe into a world filled with fauns, witches, centaurs, and more. There’s also a lion who stands in for Jesus, because as anyone who’s read Narnia could tell you, the books are very much a religious allegory even as they spark the imagination with their timeless storytelling.

Netflix has had movies in development based on The Chronicles of Narnia for quite some time, though you wouldn’t know it by how quiet the studio has been about the project. That secrecy is starting to crack, though; just a few weeks ago, we got confirmation that Barbie director Greta Gerwig had signed on to make at least two Narnia films for the streamer.

Now, Gerwig herself is talking a bit more about the project. While Gerwig has been out on the press circuit for Barbie, questions about Narnia have come up and she hasn’t been shy about answering them, even if she’s “properly scared” to create new films in the beloved franchise.

Greta Gerwig hasn’t “started wrapping my arms around” her Narnia movies yet

“I don’t know,” Gerwig told Total Film when asked if her take on Narnia would be as “wondrous” as her vision for Barbie. “I haven’t even really started wrapping my arms around it. But I’m properly scared of it, which feels like a good place to start. I think when I’m scared, it’s always a good sign. Maybe when I stop being scared, it’ll be like, ‘Okay. Maybe I shouldn’t do that one.’ No, I’m terrified of it. It’s extraordinary. And so we’ll see, I don’t know.”

Gerwig is thinking big picture here, both in terms of Narnia as well as her career as a whole. “I hope to make all different kinds of movies in the course of the time I get to make movies, which – it’s a long time, but it’s also limited,” she said. “I want to do big things and small things and everywhere in between, and having another big canvas is exciting and also daunting.”

Narnia has received plenty of film treatments over the years. Most recently, there was a string of movies that ran from 2005 to 2010 which covered the first three books in the series: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. They were generally well-received, but didn’t do well enough for Hollywood to adapt the whole series back then.

Barbie hits theaters today. As for the Narnia movies, there likely won’t be much movement on them until the actors and writers strikes currently shutting down Hollywood come to an end. Let’s hope a fair arrangement is reached soon.

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