Let's get this out of the way: Nobody said fantasy filmmaking was easy. But as of now, Greta Gerwig's long-anticipated foray into Narnia seems dangerously close to living up to the genre's oldest cliché—delays, delays, and more delays. (Chronicles of prolonged pre-production, anyone?)
It's June, which should mean child actors learning their lines and someone, somewhere in New Zealand desperately wrangling a CGI beaver. Instead—silence. Reports from ScreenDaily just confirmed what the NarniaWeb watchdogs have been half-whispering all month: cameras probably won't roll until autumn. (Keep in mind, they were aiming for July. If you can still call it aiming.) Studios always claim “summer,” but summer's elastic in Hollywood, and right now, its end is stretching further than the wardrobe's back panel.
Let's talk facts. Producer Amy Pascal sounded supremely confident—remember “June through December” actor availability? Yet the calendar kept ticking. Casting calls came and went. Set designers probably finished their third round of coffee-fueled mood boards. And still… not a single frame exposed. Now, with Thanksgiving 2026 pegged for a theatrical debut—Netflix and IMAX want their first exclusive fling, then a quick pivot to at-home streaming for Christmas—the clock's starting to feel like a ticking time bomb, not a countdown of cinematic promise.
Seven months. That's the shooting schedule. Seven. It's ambitious, bold—or reckless, depending on your level of faith in fairy dust and adult ensemble cast coordination. Emma Mackey, Carey Mulligan, Meryl Streep, Daniel Craig (and maybe Saoirse Ronan, but her part is a closely-guarded secret—like everything else about this project, apparently). Impeccable talent, all of them. But at some point, you have to actually… I don't know, film them?
Hollywood's seen this movie before—delays disguised as “fine-tuning,” creative “reimagining” that buys another three months for rewrites and call sheets nobody reads. Not that I'm jaded or anything. (Said every reporter in history before going back to check the studio calendar for the tenth time.)
Nostalgia's a dangerous fuel. Gerwig—fresh off Barbie's plastic heartbreak and Lady Bird's kitchen-sink soul—knows how to build worlds. But Narnia's not Barbie Land. It's prickly, ancient, occasionally cold. C.S. Lewis was a theologian first, fantasist second. The Magician's Nephew, of all the books, is the weirdest origin story: creation myth, trauma, apple theft, darkness at the edge of the garden. All of that, now filtered through the lens of a production schedule that may or may not exist.
Will they pull it off? Or will Narnia get lost—again—in development hell, that dark place where good intentions go to die?
Part of me wants this film so badly it hurts. Part of me's clutching my childhood box set, hoping Gerwig finds the magic key. The risk, the mess, the ticking clock—maybe all of it is the price of trying something stranger, more honest, actually worth waiting for. Then again, if we're still waiting for a teaser next spring, I might just climb into the wardrobe myself.
