Magician’s Nephew Trailer: Greta Gerwig’s Surreal Stairway to Narnia Unveiled

By Sarah Shachat — October 13, 2026, 2:03 pm

A new road to Narnia, launched in IMAX

Greta Gerwig unveiled the first footage for Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew at an IMAX screening in New York City this week, a press event that doubled as a show-and-tell for reporters, writers, and a few lucky IndieWire staffers. The director, joined onstage by moderator Stephen Colbert, framed the preview and accompanying behind-the-scenes clips as the kind of cinema she makes: expansive, sensory, and built to be seen on the biggest possible screen. Gerwig repeatedly made plain that she is a filmmaker of the theatrical experience, and that conviction drove her campaign to secure a wide, in-theater release for this adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s portal fantasy.

The trailer had its online debut after the IMAX presentation. Even in brief glimpses, Gerwig’s version of Narnia reads as deliberately exuberant and hallucinatory — an origin tale that prefers wonder and construction over destruction.

Soundtrack surprise: Stairway and a talking lion

One of the trailer’s most eyebrow-raising choices is its use of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” a notoriously guarded track. Gerwig said she sought permission directly from Robert Plant and Jimmy Page to use the song; they granted it for the sequence in which the great lion Aslan — voiced by Meryl Streep — sings Narnia into being. The result ties a familiar rock anthem to a creation scene that leans into psychedelia and spectacle, reframing the tune’s cultural baggage into an operatic moment of genesis.

Visual approach: making, not breaking

Gerwig explained that her special-effects playbook flips the usual blockbuster tendencies. Rather than staging apocalyptic destruction or urban collapse, her VFX and sets aim to bring things into being: growth, flight, and transformation. For example, the trailer teases the birth of Narnia itself and shows practical and digital effects used to help characters and creatures take off — notably a horse named Fledge. The mood leans toward kaleidoscopic and joyful, channeling a sense of largeness and wonder as opposed to grittiness.

The heart of the story and its young leads

At the center of the tale are two children: Polly Plummer, played by Beatrice Campbell, and Digory Kirke, played by David McKenna. Their curiosity collides with the eccentric and possibly dangerous experiments of Digory’s Uncle Andrew Ketterley, portrayed by Daniel Craig — a man whose meddling may open doors between worlds. The plot positions these adventures as the origin point for Narnia and hints at consequences that ripple beyond the new land; the trailer shows early signs of larger trouble unfolding in other places, including London.

Jadis, wardrobe, and London on the brink

Emma Mackey’s Jadis, the future White Witch, appears in the trailer in a gleaming, disco-tinged armor that looks as if Lewis’s villain took a detour through a nightclub. Gerwig’s footage implies that Jadis’s arrival brings chaos to London and that the seeds of Narnia’s later darkness are present from the beginning. The film frames every beginning as threaded with the possibility of an end — a theme that the director leans into visually and narratively.

Cast notes and supporting players

Gerwig’s ensemble marries seasoned talent with emerging faces. Alongside Campbell, McKenna, Craig, Mackey, and Streep, the cast includes Carey Mulligan, Ciarán Hinds, Kobna Goldbrook-Smith, and Denis Gough. Gerwig told the IMAX audience she’s excited by how invested the whole company is in Lewis’s material, and the trailer reflects that care, giving several performers moments that suggest emotional depth beneath the pageantry.

A few lines of the film’s marketing also allude to the magical mechanics central to Lewis’s story — rings that allow travel between worlds, and the idea that the choices Polly and Digory make will reverberate across universes.

Where this version sits in the long arc of Narnia adaptations

Narnia has been translated to screens and airwaves many times: the polyester-era BBC miniseries, Brian Sibley’s radio dramatizations, and later big-screen adaptations that left impressions on different generations. For some readers, the white-paperback collections arranged in C.S. Lewis’s preferred order — beginning with The Magician’s Nephew — were their introduction. Gerwig’s take aims to be another major doorway for contemporary audiences, a cinematic reimagining that leans into spectacle and theatricality rather than television’s intimacy.

The trailer release was accompanied by featurettes that dig into production design, the choice of scale, and the music clearance. Gerwig admitted to the IMAX audience that she “only knows how to make visual stories for the big screen,” a philosophy that shaped both the movie’s aesthetic and her fight to ensure audiences see it in theaters.

The film is slated to reach cinemas on February 12. Watch the full trailer for Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew below.

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Claude Merritt

Claude Merritt explores the world of entertainment with a keen eye. From music to film, TV series, and popular culture, he covers celebrity news and American cultural trends with a lively and critical approach.