Greta Gerwig to direct Two Chronicles of Narnia movies for Netflix?

Specter

Specter

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There’s finally a new rumor about Netflix’s upcoming Chronicles of Narnia project. According to the rumor from “What’s On Netflix,” Netflix is looking to kick of their Chronicles of Narnia franchise with two films, both to be directed by Greta Gerwig.

Greta Gerwig is an extremely busy actor and director, with credits including Little Women, Lady Bird, Mistress America, and Frances Ha. In December, she’ll be starring as Babbette in Netflix’s White Noise. She is also writer and director on Warner Bros.’ film Barbie and is a writer on Disney’s live-action adaptation of Snow White, which is scheduled to release in 2024.

With a sleight that packed, we wonder when she’ll have time to direct not just one, but two, films for release on Netflix. However, she has already finished filming on Barbie. Interesting to note, that film’s composer is Alexandre Desplat, who also composed the score for her film Little Women. Could he also be a possible composer for the new Narnia franchise? We’ll see.

It’s important to note that this is all we know at this time. We don’t know what books are going to be adapted yet, nor who is writing. Two of Greta Gerwig’s films have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, so if that’s anything to go by, I think Narnia is in capable hands at the very least. We’ll have to wait and see what stories they are going to tell with these first two films.

What are your thoughts? Have you seen any of her other adaptations? Are you a fan? Comment below!

Big thanks to William O’Flaherty for the heads up!

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Link: https://narniafans.com/2022/11/greta-gerwig-to-direct-two-chronicles-of-narnia-movies-for-netflix/
 
I'm wondering what stories she will direct.

If I had to venture a guess, I think they're going to film in chronological order. And because she's possibly directing at least two films, I think that is a smart move.

The Magician's Nephew and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Multiple reasons why:
1) They are the two books that are the two highest-selling books of the series.
2) Starting with The Magician's Nephew gives us a new Narnia story adapted for the very first time.
3) Continuing with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe informs the audience that The Magician's Nephew was not a prequel to Walden Media's LWW adaptation, and instead is its own series. This avoids what happened with Batman Begins when some folks believed that Begins was a prequel to the Michael Keaton Batman film, until The Dark Knight was released.
4) It also gives us a chance to finally see something NEW of Narnia, rather than the 4th (technically 5th, if you count the lost black and white TV version) adaptation of LWW.
 
Copperfox said:
I know nothing about Greta Gerwig. I cherish the hope that her adaptations will not portray Susan and Lucy (or other female characters) leaping over tall buildings at a single bound, while Peter and Edmund (or other male characters) can't even tie their shoes without a girl teaching them how.
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Yeah, tell me about it *groan*
 
There is a Youtube reviewer named Lauren Chen. Since I discovered her, I have regularly watched her videos, and I've come to respect her insights greatly. She is NOT AT ALL OPTIMISTIC about how the new Narnian adaptations will be.
 
I always choose optimism. If I'm pessimistic about it, it might become a self-fulfilling prophecy... I have found more things that I enjoy that way, rather than being angry about things I cannot change. So with these new Narnia movies, I know I am not the writer or director, and I don't think there's any real way to influence what they are doing... at least very much. So like I always do, I wait until the credits roll before I decide how I feel. It's okay to be nervous or worried about a new adaptation, but until we have seen it for ourselves, it's okay to play the waiting game. I've seen so many people passing judgement on movies before they've even written one word of the script. It's not fair to the creators who might do the best adaptation we have ever seen. They also may not, but they have a chance.
 
Specter said:
I always choose optimism. If I'm pessimistic about it, it might become a self-fulfilling prophecy... I have found more things that I enjoy that way, rather than being angry about things I cannot change. So with these new Narnia movies, I know I am not the writer or director, and I don't think there's any real way to influence what they are doing... at least very much. So like I always do, I wait until the credits roll before I decide how I feel. It's okay to be nervous or worried about a new adaptation, but until we have seen it for ourselves, it's okay to play the waiting game. I've seen so many people passing judgement on movies before they've even written one word of the script. It's not fair to the creators who might do the best adaptation we have ever seen. They also may not, but they have a chance.
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It would make sense if someone did it after the movie was created but not before so that is so true.
 
There is such a thing as recognizing an obvious trend. Marvel, for instance, has made four movies about Thor, and Thor is gratuitously humiliated in EVERY one of them. Like being tasered in his first film. Beaten up badly in "Dark World." Or when his new built-in lightning power SHOULD HAVE given him clear victory in the arena fight against the Hulk, but the victory is stolen from him. And like his NEVER being allowed to win against Hela, so that he has to USE EVIL (Surtur) against evil, with a blunt message that evil is stronger than good. Or the latest movie making him look silly when he tries to call Mjolnir to him.

If Thor weren't ALWAYS made a clown or a punching bag in his own movies, I might retain some optimism. But it's four for four, ALWAYS an element of needlessly putting him down. So yeah, I'm entitled to be dubious about fifth time lucky.

And Lauren Chen, a woman herself, has seen enough of the abundant women-strong-men-weak, women-good-men-bad narrative in recent entertainments, that she could feel cause to anticipate more of the same.
 
Copperfox said:
There is such a thing as recognizing an obvious trend. Marvel, for instance, has made four movies about Thor, and Thor is gratuitously humiliated in EVERY one of them. Like being tasered in his first film. Beaten up badly in "Dark World." Or when his new built-in lightning power SHOULD HAVE given him clear victory in the arena fight against the Hulk, but the victory is stolen from him. And like his NEVER being allowed to win against Hela, so that he has to USE EVIL (Surtur) against evil, with a blunt message that evil is stronger than good. Or the latest movie making him look silly when he tries to call Mjolnir to him.

If Thor weren't ALWAYS made a clown or a punching bag in his own movies, I might retain some optimism. But it's four for four, ALWAYS an element of needlessly putting him down. So yeah, I'm entitled to be dubious about fifth time lucky.

And Lauren Chen, a woman herself, has seen enough of the abundant women-strong-men-weak, women-good-men-bad narrative in recent entertainments, that she could feel cause to anticipate more of the same.
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I hope she makes it as accurate as she can.
 
If she wants to be faithful to the source material, then "--as accurate as she can" WILL BE faithful. It isn't that hard. Anyone who violates the spirit of the Narnian source material, will be either doing it on purpose, or acting in dreadful ignorance of the author's intent.

The add-on movie character of Oreius the Centaur was not a betrayal of Mister Lewis' vision, because Oreius was the TYPE of character who would have rallied to the side of the Pevensies. By contrast, there was one flaw in the L-W-W movie's handling of Professor Kirke. It was an important book scene when Kirke led the older children through the LOGIC of Lucy's report. (If she was going to claim she visited Narnia for several hours, she should have stayed hidden for that long.) This was not a throw-away detail; it MATTERED that Kirke would want the Pevensies to think things through rationally. But on this one point in L-W-W, Andrew Adamson sabotaged Mister Lewis.

The coaching in logic was IN THE SPIRIT of what Lewis wanted the adult Digory Kirke to be. But Adamson trashed that literary gem, in favor of a purely emotional appeal-- "She's your sister!" --which didn't even address the issues of truth and possibilities.

Greta Gerwig inventing a dozen extra characters like Oreius would be perfectly harmless-- compared to making the LEWISIAN characters act or speak inconsistently with what Mister Lewis intended them to be.
 
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Copperfox said:
If she wants to be faithful to the source material, then "--as accurate as she can" WILL BE faithful. It isn't that hard. Anyone who violates the spirit of the Narnian source material, will be either doing it on purpose, pr acting in dreadful ignorance of the author's intent.

The add-on movie character of Oreius the Centaur was not a betrayal of Mister Lewis' vision, because Oreius was the TYPE of character who would have rallied to the side of the Pevensies. By contrast, there was one flaw in the L-W-W movie's handling of Professor Kirke. It was an important book scene when Kirke led the older children through the LOGIC of Lucy's report. (If she was going to claim she visited Narnia for several hours, she should have stayed hidden for that long.) This was not a throw-away detail; it MATTERED that Kirke would want the Pevensies to think things through rationally. But on this one point in L-W-W, Andrew Adamson sabotaged Mister Lewis.

The coaching in logic was IN THE SPIRIT of what Lewis wanted the adult Digory Kirke to be. But Adamson trashed that literary gem, in favor of a purely emotional appeal-- "She's your sister!" --which didn't even address the issues of truth and possibilities.

Greta Gerwig inventing a dozen extra characters like Oreius would be perfectly harmless-- compared to making the LEWISIAN characters act or speak inconsistently with what Mister Lewis intended them to be.
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That is true.
 
Copperfox said:
There is such a thing as recognizing an obvious trend. Marvel, for instance, has made four movies about Thor, and Thor is gratuitously humiliated in EVERY one of them.
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I only own 3 of the 4 Thor movies. I won't be buying Love & Thunder. That said, Thor has nothing to do with Greta or Narnia. It's not a running theme, because there isn't a running theme, because they haven't made the movies yet. Now, if we watch the movie, and they have done something to the characters, that's one thing. And I acknowledge that there are trends in the media right now that seem to be infiltrating most movies/shows right now... but the reversal of that seems to be starting as there are films that are failing that have that kind of content shoehorned in. I'll not name names here, but it's happening.
Copperfox said:
If she wants to be faithful to the source material, then "--as accurate as she can" WILL BE faithful. It isn't that hard. Anyone who violates the spirit of the Narnian source material, will be either doing it on purpose, or acting in dreadful ignorance of the author's intent.

The add-on movie character of Oreius the Centaur was not a betrayal of Mister Lewis' vision, because Oreius was the TYPE of character who would have rallied to the side of the Pevensies. By contrast, there was one flaw in the L-W-W movie's handling of Professor Kirke. It was an important book scene when Kirke led the older children through the LOGIC of Lucy's report. (If she was going to claim she visited Narnia for several hours, she should have stayed hidden for that long.) This was not a throw-away detail; it MATTERED that Kirke would want the Pevensies to think things through rationally. But on this one point in L-W-W, Andrew Adamson sabotaged Mister Lewis.

The coaching in logic was IN THE SPIRIT of what Lewis wanted the adult Digory Kirke to be. But Adamson trashed that literary gem, in favor of a purely emotional appeal-- "She's your sister!" --which didn't even address the issues of truth and possibilities.

Greta Gerwig inventing a dozen extra characters like Oreius would be perfectly harmless-- compared to making the LEWISIAN characters act or speak inconsistently with what Mister Lewis intended them to be.
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Let's all hope that's what she does. That said, the line "she's your sister" has a not indifferent reaction in my mind to the other logic of the book. In both cases, the logic basically says the same thing. In both cases the issue at play is trust, above all else. She told them where she was, and the professor, both times, says to the older children that they need to trust their sister. Logic is the vessel of trust in both the book and the film. In the book, the course is that Lucy didn't make it up because she could have otherwise hidden for hours rather than just suddenly show up with this story seconds after hiding. In the film, he incredulously intones "She's your sister!" Because, has your sister ever made up stories like this before? Why would she now? Shouldn't you know your sister well enough to know that she wouldn't make up something like that? All of these are the questions that run through my mind when he says that. The same thoughts as when I am reading the book, but honestly, a bit stronger from the film, because of the way in which he says it. But through all of that (Both book and movie versions) is really the main question that the professor is asking without asking it: do you not trust Lucy?
 
Specter, do you remember Mister Lewis' metaphor of people in a boat leaning to the side which is already dipping down? That is one of the most important ideas in all of his writing, because there IS a human tendency to do still more of whatever we're ALREADY doing more than enough of.

For most of my lifetime, and for all of yours, popular culture in the English-speaking world has been relentlessly telling us to follow our hearts, follow our feelings, follow our instincts, follow our emotions, follow our dreams-- to the EXCLUSION of coherent thought. Mister Adamson had a golden opportunity to inject some logic into a movie industry totally saturated with emotion. Retaining Lewis' actual attributes for the grownup Digory Kirke would not have taken anything away from the importance of kinship ties; the ties would still have been there, unchanged. But Adamson chose the easy-out of drifting downstream with the popular fixation on all emotion all the time, and thus discarded one of the most important bits in the whole novel.

If I had a thousand gold coins, and you had one silver coin, would it be fair for me to complain that YOU were excessively wealthy? Would I be injured if you had two silver coins instead of just one? Believe me, there is less than zero danger of the popular media becoming absolutely intellectual, dry, cold and uncaring.

The entertainment industry is dominated by feelings, while precise reasoning is almost unheard of. It would be well to re-introduce the missing ingredient. "The main question that the professor is asking without asking it: do you not trust Lucy?" would not have been ruined or twisted or lost by Kirke USING reason to reinforce his appeal. Rather, it would have been enriched.
 
I don't understand what the silver/gold coins has to do with.

That said, my point was, I think they managed to tell the same thing in that scene as the book does. Not the same words, but to me, it was the same outcome.

Regardless, all I am saying here is: with the new adaptations of anything, I find it exhausting to be negative about anything I don't know anything about because they haven't even written one word of the screenplay yet that I have seen, nor filmed one shot of the movie. I personally find it much more enjoyable to be either neutral or neutral hopeful/positive. It's easier, takes zero energy, and allows for whatever they are going to make to not bother me until I see trailers and eventually the movie itself. At that point, I can see how I feel. Was I impressed? Was it good? We cannot know any of that without waiting or a Flux capacitor.
 
Specter said:
I don't understand what the silver/gold coins has to do with.

That said, my point was, I think they managed to tell the same thing in that scene as the book does. Not the same words, but to me, it was the same outcome.

Regardless, all I am saying here is: with the new adaptations of anything, I find it exhausting to be negative about anything I don't know anything about because they haven't even written one word of the screenplay yet that I have seen, nor filmed one shot of the movie. I personally find it much more enjoyable to be either neutral or neutral hopeful/positive. It's easier, takes zero energy, and allows for whatever they are going to make to not bother me until I see trailers and eventually the movie itself. At that point, I can see how I feel. Was I impressed? Was it good? We cannot know any of that without waiting or a Flux capacitor.
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That is very true don't just judge first watch something or wait to watch it then judge.
 
All right. Step by step.

Hermoine, I agree about not PRE-judging; but my remarks come AFTER seeing the movie in question.

Identifying a very real defect is not negative, any more than a doctor figuring out what the illness is, is negative. The defect itself is the thing which is negative, so remedying the defect is as positive as you can get.

A defect may consist in having too much of one thing (emotionalism here) and too little of another thing (accurate thought here). If we say that the danger is having too much of the second thing, we'll never fix the problem. THIS is what my gold-and-silver illustration was about. But if the coin analogy doesn't help, ignore it. I'll just flat-out state the facts.

It is a fact that there never was, and never will be, a SHORTAGE of emotionalism in popular entertainment.

It is a fact that the popular culture is more likely to disrespect a keen analytical intelligence, than to admire it.

It is a fact that Mister Lewis wanted the adult Digory Kirke to be a man who HIGHLY VALUED analytical intelligence. That's why Kirke was concerned about what was taught in schools.

It is a valid inference that, if Digory Kirke really existed, and he got to see modern schools, the LAST thing he would say about them is that they had TOO MUCH logic being taught.

It is also a valid inference that, if Mister Lewis were still with us on Earth, he would have preferred to KEEP the logical element in Kirke's advice to Peter and Susan.

It is a fact that keeping the logical element would not have destroyed the concern for sibling love-bonds. And it is a fact that making Kirke appeal ONLY to emotion, was needlessly discarding something which Mister Lewis had purposely included.
 
Copperfox said:
All right. Step by step.

Hermoine, I agree about not PRE-judging; but my remarks come AFTER seeing the movie in question.

Identifying a very real defect is not negative, any more than a doctor figuring out what the illness is, is negative. The defect itself is the thing which is negative, so remedying the defect is as positive as you can get.

A defect may consist in having too much of one thing (emotionalism here) and too little of another thing (accurate thought here). If we say that the danger is having too much of the second thing, we'll never fix the problem. THIS is what my gold-and-silver illustration was about. But if the coin analogy doesn't help, ignore it. I'll just flat-out state the facts.

It is a fact that there never was, and never will be, a SHORTAGE of emotionalism in popular entertainment.

It is a fact that the popular culture is more likely to disrespect a keen analytical intelligence, than to admire it.

It is a fact that Mister Lewis wanted the adult Digory Kirke to be a man who HIGHLY VALUED analytical intelligence. That's why Kirke was concerned about what was taught in schools.

It is a valid inference that, if Digory Kirke really existed, and he got to see modern schools, the LAST thing he would say about them is that they had TOO MUCH logic being taught.

It is also a valid inference that, if Mister Lewis were still with us on Earth, he would have preferred to KEEP the logical element in Kirke's advice to Peter and Susan.

It is a fact that keeping the logical element would not have destroyed the concern for sibling love-bonds. And it is a fact that making Kirke appeal ONLY to emotion, was needlessly discarding something which Mister Lewis had purposely included.
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That makes more sense now.
 
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