The Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew trailer arrived on Netflix’s YouTube channel on October 13, 2026, and within minutes the internet collectively realized that Greta Gerwig has apparently decided the creation of a fantasy universe should feel less like a Sunday school lesson and more like the opening set at a 1970s rock festival.
If you were expecting gentle string swells and a wardrobe creaking open in hushed reverence, the Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew trailer has other plans — and they involve Led Zeppelin.
Wait, Where Did This Come From?
A quick level-set for anyone who blinked: this isn’t a remake of the 2005 Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The Magician’s Nephew is, famously, the book C.S. Lewis wrote sixth but intended (eventually) to be read first — the Genesis-but-with-a-talking-lion origin story of Narnia itself.
It tells the tale of how the fantasy realm came into existence, and Gerwig is taking viewers to where it all began with the first-ever live-action adaptation of the novel. So yes, before Narnia had a witch problem, it had a creation problem, and the Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew trailer is here to show us the Big Bang, Gerwig-style.
As Nerdist reports, this vibrant first trailer for The Magician’s Nephew is full of bright colors and rock and roll, promising a journey from a dark and drab England to the birth of a different dimension where Meryl Streep’s Aslan will rule. Somewhere, C.S. Lewis is either delighted or reaching for smelling salts. Possibly both.
The Soundtrack Choice Nobody Saw Coming
Here’s the detail that’s eating the internet alive: the centerpiece needle-drop of the Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew trailer is Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”
According to Consequence, the dazzling visual effects in the trailer are accompanied by Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” which very rarely gets this kind of licensing for movie soundtracks — making the trailer all the more special. For a band notoriously stingy about where their music ends up, scoring a world’s literal creation with “Stairway” is either the most on-the-nose needle-drop in blockbuster history or an act of pure narrative genius. Jury’s out. Goosebumps are not.
This tracks with what we already knew about Gerwig’s vision for the project. Per Nerdist’s reporting, Gerwig has previously described her first Narnia movie as a ’60s, David Bowie-inspired rock non-musical — emphasis on non-musical, so nobody’s bursting into choreographed song about a wardrobe, but the DNA of glam-rock spectacle is clearly baked into every frame.
The film will also feature an original score by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, which, if you know anything about Ronson’s résumé, tells you precisely how seriously this production is taking “vibe.”
What Actually Happens in the Trailer
Strip away the glitter and guitar riffs, and the Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew trailer gives us a fairly classic origin-story shape: we’re introduced to young Digory Kirke (David McKenna), whose uncle turns out to be the titular magician — and his newest trick is creating the world that will soon be known as Narnia.
That uncle, of course, is played by Daniel Craig, trading Bond’s tailored suits for what MovieWeb calls an eccentric magician unleashed in this new Netflix fantasy epic.
And then there’s the ending, which multiple outlets agree is the trailer’s mic-drop moment: Meryl Streep’s Aslan is seen coming to life among the cosmos at the very end of the trailer, formed out of swirling, colorful stars. It’s the kind of image that makes you forgive the whole rock-concert energy of everything that came before it — a lion literally sung into existence out of starlight, which, if you’ve read the book, is exactly the point.
Lewis would probably clock that one bit as faithful, even if he’d raise an eyebrow at everything surrounding it.
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The Cast, Assembled Like an Avengers Lineup for Oxford Dons
The ensemble on display across the Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew trailer is stacked enough that it almost undersells how weird and wonderful this casting is. Per Awards Radar, the cast consists of Daniel Craig, Meryl Streep, David McKenna, Beatrice Campbell, Emma Mackey, Carey Mulligan, Ciarán Hinds, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Denise Gough, and Susan Wokoma.
Newcomers McKenna and Campbell anchor the story as Digory and Polly, the kids whose curiosity kicks the whole multiverse-adjacent plot into motion, while Emma Mackey gets to play Jadis before she becomes the ice queen we all remember terrorizing a wardrobe full of fur coats.
It’s an absurdly prestigious lineup for a children’s fantasy prequel, and that’s sort of the whole marketing thesis here: Netflix isn’t quietly releasing a kids’ movie, it’s rolling out a four-quadrant “event,” complete with an Oscar winner voicing a lion made of stardust.
Why Netflix Is Suddenly Obsessed With Movie Theaters
The other headline buried inside the Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew trailer rollout is the release strategy itself, which is unusual for a company that generally treats theatrical windows the way most of us treat gym memberships — technically possible, rarely used.
Per MovieWeb, Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew will come out in theaters, including IMAX, on February 12, 2027, before becoming available to stream on Netflix on April 2, 2027. That’s not a token two-week theatrical blip for awards eligibility; per MovieWeb’s companion report, this marks Netflix giving Narnia the origin treatment with Gerwig’s bold new vision hitting the big screen before streaming, in what multiple trades have described as Netflix’s first full wide theatrical release.
What’s on Netflix and MEAWW both confirmed the trailer’s drop was scheduled down to the minute — the trailer was announced to release at 2 PM ET in the US — which is the kind of orchestrated, roadblock-style rollout usually reserved for superhero tentpoles, not a story about two kids, a magic ring, and some unfortunate garden vegetables.
So… Is It Good?
That’s the one question the Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew trailer can’t fully answer yet, and to their credit, outlets covering it are being appropriately cautious. As Nerdist put it, while some fans of the books have worried that Gerwig’s adaptation — which moves the story’s setting up by several decades — might not stay true to Lewis’s novel, this trailer certainly captures the awe and fantastic sense of wonder of the original story. Translation: the purists are nervous, the trailer looks genuinely gorgeous, and we won’t know who’s right until February.
What we do know is that the internet now has nearly four months to debate whether “Stairway to Heaven” scoring the creation of Narnia is a transcendent swing or a slightly chaotic one. Either way, nobody is calling this trailer boring, and for a franchise that’s spent over a decade in development limbo, “nobody’s calling it boring” might be the real win.
Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew arrives in IMAX and wide theatrical release on February 12, 2027, before streaming on Netflix starting April 2, 2027.
