New Details Emerge About Matthew Aldrich’s Vision for Narnia at Netflix

Picture Credits: Disney / Lionsgate Premiere

The development of The Chronicles of Narnia at Netflix has been a painful wait for fans of the beloved novel series by C.S. Lewis. We recently crossed the six-year mark since Netflix first announced it was adapting the novels into movies and series. Nearly a year after the initial announcement, Coco director Matthew Aldrich was appointed as a “creative architect.” A new podcast with Matthew Aldrich sheds some light on what happened in those early years. 

The news comes through the Script Apart with Al Horner podcast, which posted an episode on September 5th with Matthew Aldrich. Much of the podcast is focused (we’ve put a full transcript here) on Aldrich’s time on the Oscar-winning Disney movie Coco, speaking about the cultural impact of the movie at the time and its lasting legacy. When Netflix first announced his involvement, they stated, “Aldrich will work across both series and film and serve as a creative architect on all projects under the deal.”

However, as we know, Aldrich will depart the project sometime in 2020. The interviewer concluded the podcast by asking about Narnia and his ultimate involvement. Aldrich responded forthrightly when asked about an update saying:

“Yeah, I worked on that for about a year and a half. And then I’m not working on that anymore. Yeah, that was an uphill sledding for my part. I will say that the, yeah, I hate using the words ‘creative differences’ because it always sounds like a smokescreen for something, but it actually, it was creative differences. Like I had a very specific idea about what I wanted to do with the Narnia material. I had laid out for them sort of a strategy of film and series as a way to adapt the seven books in a way that was both sort of respectful, but also not precious, and try to sort of update them in some fun ways.

And ultimately that’s not the direction Netflix wanted to go. So I’m not the person to ask what’s happening in Narnia. It’s funny, it’s like, since Coco, I’ve had, obviously you open a lot of doors and that’s both wonderful and maddening because I work on things that I’m not allowed to talk about now.”

Despite ultimately parting with Aldrich, Narnia remained a priority at Netflix, with Greta Gerwig (as we first reported in November 2022) officially boarding the franchise with the view to direct two movies for the streamer. That remains the case to this day, with recent reporting surfacing as of late about an IMAX release for the movie, with it eying a release sometime in the Fall of 2026 (reportedly Christmas). Netflix has not officially commented on any of that as of yet. For that release to become true, the movie would undoubtedly need to get into production in 2025. Still, we’ve heard no official production date has been penciled in as of yet, and reports of a January 2025 start in New Zealand are false.

Thanks to NarniaWeb for the heads up on this new podcast and the new information. 

Are you still looking forward to The Chronicles of Narnia being adapted at Netflix? Let us know in the comments.