Gerwig's Narnia poster hides Daniel Craig and Meryl Streep — fans call that the best part
Meryl Streep technically made the poster, just not in a form her agent would recognise. Reddit thinks every blockbuster should take the hint.
Netflix released the first poster for Greta Gerwig's Narnia: The Magician's Nephew on 12 October 2026, a day before the first trailer, which is due on 13 October at 2pm Eastern, 7pm in the UK. The poster is almost entirely sky. Aslan fills the frame as a silhouette made of stars, and inside the lion the winged horse Fledge carries Digory and Polly towards a burst of light. The tagline is "A Universe Begins", and the one name billed above the title is Gerwig's.
Which is a bold call for this cast list. Daniel Craig plays Uncle Andrew, the magician of the title, Emma Mackey is Jadis, Carey Mulligan plays Digory's mother Mabel, and Meryl Streep voices Aslan. Newcomers David McKenna and Beatrice Campbell play the children. Not one famous face made the cut. Streep, to be fair, is technically up there, just in constellation form.
No floating heads, for once
The r/movies thread passed 9,000 upvotes and 1,270 comments, and it read less like a fan forum than a petition against the standard blockbuster one-sheet. The top comment is simply "That is a beautiful poster". The second gets to the actual point:
"Gorgeous poster. Nice to see something fresh-looking instead of the retro style circle of faces."
That is the whole reaction in one line: people are not praising the colour palette, they are praising the missing cast collage. The reply underneath went for sarcasm and got the best joke of the day:
"But how will I know who is in it if there isn't like a telescopic stack of busts with the whole cast?"
Others called it "very 80s fantasy" and cheered "a poster that isn't just all of the top billed actors arranged half-assedly on a generic background". One cynic noted that most big films get a nice poster like this, it's just that the one on the bus stops is the floating-heads version, so Narnia will probably get one too. Fair enough. But the first impression is the one Netflix chose, and it chose a lion made of stars over Daniel Craig's cheekbones.
Netflix has a Bond, a three-time Oscar nominee and the most-nominated actor in Oscar history. The first poster is a lion made of stars.
A cast collage tells you who is in a film. This one tells you what the film is about, and for a book most British readers met at school, that is the stronger sell.
Read more: Tom Cruise's flop gave Nolan his Imax screens back — The Odyssey is now chasing Barbie
Why the stars fit the book
The Magician's Nephew is the Narnia origin story, the book where Aslan sings the world into existence, so a lion with the cosmos inside it is the plot, not a mood board. When Empire's world-exclusive first look confirmed Streep as the first woman to voice Aslan on screen, Gerwig described the film as a kind of rock opera, set in a world made of music, and said she wanted a voice with gravitas but without self-seriousness.
The release plan
Netflix moved the film out of 2026 earlier this year and swapped a short IMAX run for a proper one in cinemas. The original plan was two weeks in IMAX from Thanksgiving, then Netflix on Christmas Day. Now it goes like this:
- 10 February 2027: IMAX sneak previews.
- 12 February 2027: wide release in cinemas, IMAX and standard formats.
- 2 April 2027: Netflix, after 49 days exclusively in cinemas.
No Netflix original has had a longer cinema window. Barbie made $1.4 billion, which buys Gerwig a certain amount of patience.
The trailer lands tonight, and the floating heads are probably coming in spring. For one day, though, a blockbuster with a Bond in it sold itself on a lion, a winged horse and a lot of stars.
Read more: Sam Mendes' Beatles binge is now pitched as one film a week — four weeks, four tickets