Greta Gerwig Wants to Honor C.S. Lewis with Narnia Adaptation: ‘Shaped Me’
By Movieguide® Contributor
Great Gerwig hopes that her upcoming Narnia movies will honor C.S. Lewis’ original books and help viewers connect with them like never before.
“It’s connected to the folklore and fairy stories of England, but it’s a combination of different traditions,” Gerwig said about the world of Narnia. “As a child, you accept the whole thing – that you’re in this land of Narnia, there’s fauns, and then Father Christmas shows up. It doesn’t even occur to you that it’s not schematic. I’m interested in embracing the paradox of the worlds that Lewis created, because that’s what’s so compelling about them.”
Gerwig’s desire to take on this task comes from her long history with Narnia. Though this is her first time engaging with Lewis’ world professionally, it played a major part in her life growing up.
“I would say the two biggest books of my childhood were ‘Little Women’ and the ‘Narnia’ books,” Gerwig said. “So I had that, you know, instant excitement, but instant terror that comes from trying to tackle something that has shaped me.”
“I’m trying to make it magical,” she added. “I want to make it feel like magic.”
The director’s intimate knowledge of the story and the author will prove vital to doing justice to this beloved story. While she will follow her own artistic vision, she is committed to honoring Lewis’ original vision for Narnia.
“C.S. Lewis said that the goal of writing fantasy – you know, something from his imagination – he’d say, let’s say you wrote about an enchanting forest. The goal would be that then every time you walk into a forest after you read it, you’d say to yourself, ‘Maybe this is an enchanted forest.’ So that’s a tall order,” Gerwig explained.
The project will stay true to Lewis’ vision by including the faith elements that are vital to the story.
“It won’t be counter to how the audience may have imagined those worlds, but it will be bigger and bolder than they thought. [It will be] rooted in faith,” Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos told Time.
Movieguide® previously reported:
Greta Gerwig might be one of Hollywood’s biggest directors, but she’s feeling a little intimidated by her next project — an adaptation of THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA.
“I’m slightly in the place of terror because I really do have such reverence for Narnia,” the LITTLE WOMEN director shared. “I loved Narnia so much as a child. As an adult, C.S. Lewis is a thinker and a writer. I’m intimidated by doing this. It’s something that feels like a worthy thing to be intimidated by.”
Gerwig added, “As a non-British person, I feel a particular sense of wanting to do it correctly…it’s like when Americans do Shakespeare, there’s a slight feeling of reverence and as if maybe we should treat it with extra care. It is not our countryman.”
The writer and director spoke further about her fear of the project during an appearance on the “Total Film” podcast, saying, “I haven’t even really started wrapping my arms around it, but I’m properly scared of it, which feels like a good place to start,” via Variety.
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