With Barbie set to eat the box office alive and cement her as Hollywood’s newest massively successful director of $100+ million blockbusters, Greta Gerwig isn’t wasting any time at all in continuing down her latest career path.
Having first been rumored last year, it was officially confirmed not too long ago that the Academy Award-nominated filmmaker would be taking on the daunting task of rebooting The Chronicles of Narnia for Netflix with at least two feature-length fantasy epics. The streaming service has held the rights since 2018 but taken its sweet time doing anything with them, but Gerwig is a fascinating candidate to steer the ship.
There’s no shortage of pressure given that the previous trilogy suffered heavily from the law of diminishing returns despite netting upwards of $1.5 billion at the box office, something that Gerwig is completely aware of after she admitted that outright fear was coursing through her veins in an interview with Total Film.
“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. I think when I’m scared, it’s always a good sign. Maybe when I stop being scared, it’ll be like, ‘Okay. Maybe I shouldn’t do that one.’ No, I’m terrified of it. It’s extraordinary. And so we’ll see, I don’t know.”
Margot Robbie escaping Barbie Land is one thing, but mega budget literary adaptations carrying plenty of expansive world-building and visual effects are something else altogether. Fingers crossed that Gerwig overcomes those nerves, because Narnia in her hands has the potential to be something special.