The Magician’s Nephew delayed to 2027

Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, the new C.S. Lewis adaptation from Barbie director Greta Gerwig, won’t make its previously scheduled November 2026 release date. Instead, it will debut in theaters in February 2027, Netflix announced Friday. While that’s a substantial delay, movie theater aficionados have reason to rejoice: Gerwig’s origin story for the land of Narnia will get a lengthy seven-week run in theaters, an unusual step for Netflix.

Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew will be released in IMAX and globally in movie theaters on Feb. 12, 2027, and will stream on Netflix on April 2, 2027. Early showings in IMAX will begin on Feb. 10, 2027.

The Magician’s Nephew is the sixth book Lewis released in The Chronicles of Narnia series. Published in 1955, it’s a prequel that details how Aslan the lion created the magical land of Narnia. The book chronicles the early days of Narnia’s history and is set a thousand years before The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis’ first and best-known Narnia book.

“I was a child when I first read The Magician’s Nephew, and I fell in love with the gorgeously improbable but completely brilliant concept of a cosmic lion singing the world of Narnia to life,” Gerwig said in a statement. “I didn’t know that I would grow up to make films, but a universe built out of music is an idea that always lived in my heart. It is the honor of a lifetime to be asked to imagine it into being. Because of C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, I believed in magic and hidden worlds and adventure. I believed that anywhere could be enchanted and that anyone could be swept up into an epic. That wonder and awe was available to everyone, even ordinary people like me… It transformed me.”

Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew will be the first live-action film adaptation of Lewis’ book. Some of the other installments in the series have been adapted multiple times, particularly The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which became an ITV serial in 1967, an animated movie in 1979, a BBC series in 1988, and a live-action movie produced by Walden Media and released by Disney and 20th Century in 2005. The BBC and Walden each followed their adaptations of that first book by adapting the next two novels in the series, Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The Magician’s Nephew has previously been adapted for the theater and radio, and as a manga. After the conclusion of Walden Media’s trio of films, Netflix acquired the rights to C.S. Lewis’ works in 2018.

Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew stars Emma Mackey, Carey Mulligan, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Daniel Craig, and Meryl Streep, as well as newcomers David McKenna and Beatrice Campbell. Gerwig is directing and writing the film.