Narnia Magician's Nephew Trailer Opens the Wardrobe Again

Netflix has released the first trailer for Greta Gerwig's Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, and fantasy fans just got their clearest look yet at where the wardrobe saga actually begins. The Narnia Magician's Nephew trailer arrived on October 13 and premiered during an IMAX sneak preview in New York, with Gerwig herself in attendance, according to Particle News. The footage sets up the origin story: the day Narnia itself was created.

The film adapts C.S. Lewis's 1955 novel, the sixth book in publication order but the first story chronologically in The Chronicles of Narnia. It follows two London children, Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, played by newcomers David McKenna and Beatrice Campbell, who travel between worlds using a set of magic rings. Their journey lands them in Narnia on the very day of its creation, where they cross paths with Jadis, the sorceress who will one day rule as the White Witch, as ComingSoon reported. The Narnia Magician's Nephew trailer treats that creation as the emotional center of the whole film.

The cast pairs the two young leads with major established names. Emma Mackey plays Jadis, Daniel Craig portrays Digory's uncle Andrew Ketterley, and Carey Mulligan appears as Digory's mother, Flora Kirke. Meryl Streep voices Aslan, the lion who sings Narnia into being. The supporting cast includes Ciarán Hinds, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Denise Gough, and Susan Wokoma, according to ComingSoon.

What the Narnia Magician's Nephew trailer reveals

The Narnia Magician's Nephew trailer spends the most time on Mackey's Jadis, and her look is already driving the online conversation. She wears short black hair with dark, glittery eyeshadow and a striking metallic silver chainmail dress, a bold departure from the regal red gowns of earlier adaptations, as SuperHeroHype detailed. Viewers on social media praised the design and described the casting as inspired, which suggests Gerwig's glam-rock take on the character has landed with the fan base.

The music choice is just as deliberate. The trailer is scored to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," and Gerwig personally showed an early cut to Robert Plant and Jimmy Page to win permission to use the song, Particle News reported. The new poster leans into the same mythic scale, carrying the tagline "A Universe Begins" beneath a lion's silhouette as two riders cross a burst of light on a winged horse, according to ComingSoon. It is a long way from the muted palette of the earlier films.

Beyond the visuals, the Narnia Magician's Nephew trailer makes the timeline clear: this is not a continuation of the 2000s films but a fresh start at the chronological beginning of the series. Gerwig wrote the screenplay herself, and the preview frames the creation sequence as a sweeping set piece rather than a quiet origin, which gives fans a good sense of how ambitious the scale is.

Netflix's theatrical gamble

The release plan is unusual for the streamer. IMAX previews begin February 10, 2027, the film goes wide in theaters on February 12, 2027, and it starts streaming on Netflix on April 2, 2027. That makes this the first major theatrical-first rollout in Netflix history, a real shift for a company that has long avoided wide theatrical windows, as Next Best Picture noted. Gerwig reportedly pushed hard for the big-screen treatment, and Netflix agreed, which tells you how much the studio wants this one to play like an event.

Netflix struck its deal with the C.S. Lewis Company back in 2018 to produce new adaptations, and this is the first payoff: The Magician's Nephew has never been adapted for the screen before, StarsAlert reported. The Narnia Magician's Nephew trailer arrives nearly a decade into that agreement, following the Walden Media trilogy that wrapped up in the early 2010s. Whether it launches a new run of Narnia films will likely depend on how the theatrical numbers look in February.

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