The story first cropped up round April 1, so few individuals gave it discover till Deadline confirmed the rumors.

Oscar-winning writer-director Greta Gerwig, who’s adapting “The Chronicles of Narnia” for Netflix, is “in talks” to have Meryl Streep play the pivotal position of the Nice Lion Aslan.

Authored by Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, an in depth good friend of J.R.R. Tolkien of “The Lord of the Rings” fame, “The Chronicles of Narnia” stays among the many best-selling fantasy guide sequence for grade-schoolers. Within the early 2000s, a trilogy of Narnia movies earned $1.5 billion in international field workplace.

Aslan, a divine being and the one character current in all seven Narnia novels, was written as a stand-in of types for Jesus Christ, although not a direct allegory.

Trustworthy readers of Lewis, a various international fanbase who are usually evangelical or from one other Christian custom, have cried foul.

“This might be a horrible resolution for each attainable motive,” wrote Aaron Earls at The Wardrobe Door. “Artwork shouldn’t be as much as the favored vote, however variations of already present works have to present the most important voice to the unique work.”

Equally, in an op-ed titled “Aslan Unmade,” cultural apologist and instructor Annie Crawford wrote: “To vary the gender of The Lion, of The King… is to utterly alter the construction and which means of Lewis’s sacramental cosmos.”

In the meantime, ballot outcomes from NarniaWeb present that 65 p.c of Narnia followers at the moment are “extraordinarily involved” about Netflix’s Narnia movie sequence. The main franchise fan web site has posted contact data for producers of the movie sequence, urging followers to share their suggestions.

Different commentators have been muted or dismissive of the rising outrage.

Author-editor Lon Harris responded, “This discourse on that is already SUPER exhausting. Aslan isn’t actual. Aslan isn’t Jesus. It’s a speaking animal film for kids. Relax.” And Kat Coffin, an educational who makes a speciality of C.S. Lewis, posted, “So long as they preserve Aslan’s mane, I don’t care if Meryl Streep performs Him.”

However tens of thousands and thousands of followers do care—and Narnia is maybe the highest-profile franchise play that Netflix has ever tried. Even the primary movie of the sequence may change the norms on how the world’s greatest streamer rolls out its film into theaters… or doesn’t.

In an unprecedented deal, The Magician’s Nephew, a Narnia origin story set for Thanksgiving 2026 launch, has secured a two-week run on IMAX screens, previous to a Christmas Day international streaming launch. Throughout a 12 months filled with big-budget releases, it speaks to the facility of each the franchise and director Gerwig.

The stakes are extremely excessive for Netflix and the movie’s producers. Earlier than a single body is shot, gender-bending Aslan dangers a vocal fanbase and parade of YouTubers labeling it “going woke.”

Gerwig, Gordon, and the Narnia Movie Crew 

A high-caliber crew has assembled for this newest on-screen iteration of Narnia – and one can not dismiss out-of-hand their love and curiosity within the supply materials.

Mark Gordon, a producer of classics like Saving Non-public Ryan and The Patriot, additionally had a lead manufacturing position within the thrilling adaptation of Homicide On the Orient Categorical. Word that any new movie scripts would presumably want sign-off from The C.S. Lewis Property.

Actually, Douglas Gresham, C.S. Lewis’s stepson, who has shepherded over a dozen variations of Narnia in varied codecs, was initially listed as an government producer of the movies in 2018. Nonetheless, Gresham’s well being has not too long ago been in decline, and he’s now in hospice care.

Others on Netflix’s Narnia crew embrace producer Amy Pascal, who’s made Sony’s Spider-Man movies a multi-billion-dollar franchise, and Netflix Chairman of Movie Dan Lin, who has spoken of his Christian religion and invested in faith-based movies since becoming a member of the streamer final 12 months.

However an important participant is acclaimed director Greta Gerwig, whose profession has been primarily based on upending norms, most notably with Barbie’s feminine empowerment themes. Each considered one of her 4 movies up to now, all of which she wrote, have earned Oscar nominations–a singular feat.

Her tackle Louisa Could Alcott’s Little Girls, hailed as a devoted and visually resplendent adaptation, maybe provides one of the best clues on how she would possibly adapt Narnia.

Gerwig, who attended a Catholic boarding college rising up, has mentioned she feels “reverence” for The Chronicles of Narnia, citing the sequence alongside Little Girls as her biggest early affect.

Shouldn’t a filmmaker of this caliber be free to create the model she needs? Is it truly dangerous for Gerwig to forged Streep, essentially the most Oscar-nominated actress in historical past, for this iconic position?

Conflict of Cultural Values

The questions converse to a collision of values in fashionable tradition, how Gerwig’s norm-busting American insurgent spirit hardly gels with the Oxford professor who created Narnia.

Lewis famously wrote, “All of us need progress. However progress means getting nearer to the place the place you wish to be . . . If you’re on the incorrect street, progress means doing an about-turn and strolling again to the fitting street.”

Even within the Nineteen Forties and 50s, prior to varied cultural revolutions, Lewis was seen as a traditionalist – on Christian doctrine, on social ethics, and definitely on marriage and sexuality.

Throughout Lewis’ Narnia tales, Aslan is known as he/him. A frequent oath amongst denizens of the fictional lands is, “By the Lion’s mane,” and, in a number of tales, protagonists search consolation by crying on Aslan’s mane. Biology reveals it’s extraordinarily uncommon for a lioness to have a mane.

Within the first of Lewis’ lesser-known House Trilogy novels, Perelandra, the hero encounters angelic beings who embody the masculine and female, and he describes the variations.

“(Malacandra) held in his hand one thing like a spear, however the arms of the opposite (Perelandra) have been open, with the palms in direction of him,” writes Lewis. In different passages, the novel expounds on how bodily sexual attributes are solely a mirrored image of gender variations.

As we speak, many cultural observers might view such concepts as archaic. But the characters, conflicts, aesthetics, and substance of The Chronicles of Narnia derive not solely from Lewis’ fanciful tackle folklore and fairy tales, however on his theology and sociology.

To discard the id of Aslan as a male king or have a girl painting him wouldn’t be the Nice Lion whom readers have recognized and cherished for generations.

Don’t Feed the Trolls

By way of funding, Netflix’s Narnia movie sequence is prone to rival Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Energy, which is able to quantity to about $3 billion in manufacturing and rights prices by its fifth and closing season.

Whereas opinions on the Tolkien-based TV adaptation fluctuate, most observers agree that season one specifically made many unforced errors – emphasizing Galadriel as a vengeance-driven warrior and rewriting elements of Tolkien lore, amongst different points.

Season two of The Rings of Energy hewed a lot nearer to the substance and spirit of the writer’s work, most reviewers agree. But the harm had been performed, with a lot decrease streaming rankings within the second outing. (Having interviewed the showrunners, I hope extra viewers give the sequence an opportunity.)

Trollish crit now dominates on-line dialogue of The Rings of Energy – although a few of it, akin to objections to ethnically numerous casting of elves and dwarves, appears misguided. But it surely gained traction not as a consequence of race points, however different methods the primary entry felt stripped of some which means.

On this case, an try and forged Streep because the Son of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea, considered one of Aslan’s titles in Narnia, appears like a slap within the face to diehard franchise followers.

Maybe essentially the most curious facet of this early outrage, when the movie’s official title hasn’t been introduced and filming won’t start till this summer season, is that these talks with Streep have been leaked.

Is a member of the manufacturing hoping to go off this unforced error earlier than it occurs? Within the phrases of the Narnian warrior mouse Reepicheep: “We have now nothing if not perception.”

Josh M. Shepherd, who writes about religion and tradition for a number of media shops together with Household Theater Productions, lives in central Florida together with his household.

This text initially appeared at What’s On Netflix.