The Chairman of Netflix Film Scott Stuber provided an update on the previously announced The Chronicles of Narnia project from Barbie director Greta Gerwig.
Netflix had previously announced they were working on multiple projects for The Chronicles of Narnia back in 2018. A press release stated, “Netflix will develop new series and film projects based on C.S. Lewis’ beloved The Chronicles of Narnia series. Under the terms of a multi-year deal between Netflix and The C.S. Lewis Company, Netflix will develop classic stories from across the Narnia universe into series and films for its members worldwide.”
Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said at the time, “C.S. Lewis’ beloved Chronicles of Narnia stories have resonated with generations of readers around the world. Families have fallen in love with characters like Aslan and the entire world of Narnia, and we’re thrilled to be their home for years to come.”
C.S. Lewis’ stepson Douglas Gresham also said, “It is wonderful to know that folks from all over are looking forward to seeing more of Narnia, and that the advances in production and distribution technology have made it possible for us to make Narnian adventures come to life all over the world.”
“Netflix seems to be the very best medium with which to achieve this aim, and I am looking forward to working with them towards this goal,” Gresham added.
During the promotion of Barbie it was revealed by The New Yorker’s Alex Barasch that Gerwig would write and direct at least two films based on C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia.
During the press tour, Gerwig gave an update on the films telling Games Radar, “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.”
She explained, “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 added, “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.”
“I want to do big things and small things and everywhere in between, and having another big canvas is exciting and also daunting,” she concluded.
During an interview with Variety’s Cynthia Littleton, Stuber gave an update on the various Narnia projects they have been working on and specifically the ones Gerwig is attached to.
He said, “[Gerwig] grew up in a Christian background. The C.S. Lewis books are very much based in Christianity. And so we just started talking about it. And like I said earlier, we don’t have IP, so when we had the opportunity [to license] those books or the [Roald Dahl Co.] we’ve jumped at it, to have stories that people recognize and the ability to tell those stories.”
“So it was just a great opportunity and I’m so thrilled that she’s working on it with us and I’m just thrilled to be in business with her,” he continued. “And she’s just an incredible talent.”
Asked what Gerwig’s role is on the projects, Stuber said, “Obviously, ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ is kind of the preeminent one, but there’s such an interesting narrative form [to the Narnia series] if you read all of them.”
“And so that’s what she’s working on now with [producer] Amy Pascal and Mark Gordon and they’re trying to figure out how they can break the whole arc of all of it,” he concluded.
There is significant concern about Gerwig’s role in the film projects given she declared her Barbie movie as a “feminist film” and appears to want to proselytize this anti-Christian ideology.
She explained, “I think it belongs to the film because when we were making it the whole– Barbie is like an icon that as Margot was speaking to, she exists in the both and, not the either or. She’s not either good or bad or, you know. Diving into the complexity of it and not running away from it, but looking at all the thorniness and stepping into it, and also looking at all the thorniness and stepping into what is the negotiation of what women need to be and how to give them something other than a tightrope to walk on is how it feels feminist to me.”
Lewis made it abundantly clear The Chronicles of Narnia books would help spread Christianity.
He wrote in “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to Be Said” in On Stories and Other Essays on Literature, “Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as it if were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.”
Feminism is incompatible with Christianity as Dale O’Leary notes, “The feminist analysis is nonsense. Women aren’t going to be better off when there are no families. There is no evidence that any of this will work. From the beginning the goals of feminism were clear: destruction of patriarchy; control of reproduction including contraception, abortion, and reproductive technologies; destruction of the fatherheaded family with divorce and illegitimacy made normal; all women in the workforce, no man able to support his family and free 24 hour day care; destruction of all-male institutions; total sexual liberation including sex for children, homosexuality, and bisexuality; destruction of worship of God as father.”
What do you make of Stuber’s comments about Gerwig and the Narnia projects?
NEXT: Bill Maher Slams The ‘Barbie’ Movie, Calls It A “Preachy, Man-Hating, And A ZombieLie” Of A Film