'breaking the arc of Narnia'?

Someone finally asked The Question about Greta Gerwig's upcoming adaptation(s)

Greta Gerwig is set to adapt Narnia for Netflix.

I woke up this morning expecting to post on here about my new piece in Christ & Pop Culture—Barbie as Portal Fantasy—and What That Means for Greta Gerwig’s Narnia Adaptation. Yay. But the first thing that popped up on my home screen was this...

The algorithm knows me so well.

I clicked, hoping against hope that this wasn’t yet another misleading headline about the future film/series adaptation I’m most anticipating. Unfortunately, it was. We still don’t know which book Greta Gerwig will tackle first or whether it’ll be a movie or series or how much of the Narniad she’ll actually adapt.

But that misleadingly-titled piece quotes from a Variety interview with Netflix’s film chief Scott Stuber. Variety executive editor Brent Lang asks: “You have Greta Gerwig adapting C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books. Why did you decide to make that deal? What about her as a filmmaker made you feel like that was a good fit with that material?”

Very good questions. And here’s Stuber’s answer:

Greta’s been a friend for a while. Her husband, [director] Noah Baumbach, we’re close to, we’ve made I think three films. We’re starting another one. We have a big deal with them. If you don’t know her, she’s truly one of the greatest people, not an artist, but a human being. She’s just got this great soul. When we had [2019’s] ‘Marriage Story’ and she had ‘Little Women,’ we all spent quite a bit of time on the awards trail together at dinners.

[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. And she’s just an incredible talent.

Okay, most of that is celebrative fluff—and Gerwig deserves it—but it doesn’t tell us anything useful about how Narnia will next appear on the screen. This next bit does however: “Is she writing many of these adaptations?” Lang asks. “What is her commitment to this?”

Says Stuber:

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.

“Break the whole arc of all of it”? What does that mean?

Although Netflix holds the rights to all of the Chronicles, Gerwig’s deal is (reportedly) to helm two productions. To me, “breaking the arc” implies a production which blurs the lines that separate the seven distinct Narnia novels. For example, a multi-season series telling Narnia’s story in roughly chronological order. Real ones would know where Prince Caspian ends and Dawn Treader begins, of course. But a Netflix viewer who’s never read the books (or may have only read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) would see a “three years later” transition screen and think nothing of it.

It’s hard to envision Gerwig taking that approach. Not because it’s impossible, but because it’s a massive outlay—one I don’t think she’d commit time to and one I don’t think Netflix would commit money (or server space) to. The company is infamous for playing it by ear and cancelling a show at the first sign of audience disinterest.

I’d love to see a committed, all-encompassing approach to adapting Narnia. Realistically, I don’t see it happening in the current media-entertainment climate. I’m glad Gerwig (and Robbie) dreamt big with Barbie. Perhaps she can dream even bigger with Narnia.

What do you think ‘breaking the arc’ means when it comes to adapting Narnia?

---

asides + signal boosts

Read my Christ & Pop Culture piece, in which I explain how Lewis’s adored classic shares space with the Barbie movie as part of that subgenre in which the main character travels from a “frame world” into an “other world.”

---

Congrats to

Alissa Wilkinson

on her new role as movie critic for The New York Times! I’ve enjoyed many of her insights at Vox and on Young Adult Movie Ministry, the podcast she hosts with

Sam Thielman

. I’ve listened to all but one episode and y’all can consider this a nudge for more.

---

I’m currently reading The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. It’s very insightful and will come into other posts later on. Highly recommend so far!