How Narnia Will Change Netflix
by Spencer Elkind
On October 13th, Netflix released the first trailer for their massive adaptation of Narnia:
The Magicians Nephew. Written and directed by Greta Gerwig of Barbie and Little Women
fame, the film has attracted attention for its rock opera-inspired visuals and unique take on C.S.
Lewis’s legendary book series. While I think this film looks awesome, I’ve had my eye on it for a
very different reason: the release. Narnia: The Magicians Nephew is scheduled to release in
theaters on February 11th of next year, and will remain exclusively in theaters for nearly fifty
days before arriving on Netflix in April. In the process, this movie could chart a bold new
direction for the world's largest streaming service that would benefit the entire film industry.
When Netflix initially started making its own original content in 2013, it positioned itself
as a disruptor in the overall industry, but especially so with its movies. Instead of releasing
movies in theaters exclusively for months, they put them directly on their streaming service for
everyone to see at once. The closest Netflix got to theaters was doing limited releases of their
awards hopefuls for a few weeks in the bare minimum number of theaters.
At this time, the leaders of Netflix actively believed theaters were outdated, and
streaming was the future. For a while, it looked like they were right. Netflix’s success led to the
Streaming Wars as the other major studios quickly built their own streamers and poured billions
into original content. The COVID-19 pandemic inflicted a heavy blow to the theatrical industry
that looked almost impossible to recover from. Netflix’s decision to remain out of theaters
seemed justified. However, they did make one exception.
Hot off leading Barbie to over a billion dollars and a Best Picture nomination, Greta
Gerwig was tapped to direct two films based on the Narnia book series, and she used her
recent success to demand a theatrical release. Normally, Netflix was perfectly willing to part with
filmmakers who made this demand, but in the case of Gerwig, they took a different approach. In
January of 2025, Netflix announced an exclusive deal to release Narnia: The Magicians
Nephew in a thousand IMAX theaters for a period of two weeks. While this satisfied Gerwig
enough for her to start working on the film, I still saw this on the day as a one-off and not the
start of a new trend.
However, in the summer of 2025, the game changed again with Netflix’s biggest film of
all time. So much has been said over the last 18 months about Kpop Demon Hunters, but its
biggest impact might be pushing Netflix into theaters. About two months after its release on the
streamer, Netflix released the film in theaters for a single weekend. This release notablyincluded theater chains like AMC and Regal that had rejected Netflix films in the past due to
their unwillingness to agree to exclusivity windows. The result was a 20 million dollar weekend
that earned Netflix its first-ever #1 movie at the box office. While Netflix declared this success to
be because of its run on the streamer first, the bar had been set.
Netflix would make one more major theatrical play in 2025: releasing the series finale of
their hit series Stranger Things in theaters for 48 hours, to the tune of 25 million dollars. At the
same time, they were preparing for an even bigger gamble. In December of 2025, Netflix won
the bidding war to acquire Warner Bros Discovery, placing them in control of a major,
theatrical-focused movie studio. While worries were abounding regarding the fate of many WB
theatrical releases, Netflix shockingly promised to keep releasing WB films for the mandated
45-day exclusive window. Though they eventually lost Warner Bros to a merger with Paramount,
Netflix entered 2026 with a new willingness to embrace theatrical.
Their decision notably came at the best time, as this year saw theaters finally recover
from the COVID-19 pandemic. From massive blockbusters like The Odyssey and Spider-Man:
Brand New Day to low-budget surprises like Obsession and Backrooms, the global box office is
poised to hit 10 billion dollars for the first time in seven years. Now we come to Narnia. Amidst
this tide of good fortune, Netflix upgraded Narnia to a full 50-day theatrical release, in all
formats, while also announcing that they would report box office grosses for it and five other
films they were releasing theatrically. For the first time, Netflix has something resembling a
theatrical slate. But releasing any movie in theaters always has a chance of failure. For Narnia:
The Magicians Nephew, which is rumored to cost over 250 million dollars, that chance is high,
and a failure could push Netflix back away from theatrical releases.
Among the current tides of contraction and consolidation, especially as the questions
continue to fly regarding the new mega-studio of Skydance, the prospect of Netflix entering the
theatrical landscape is incredibly promising. It all depends on these first few movies, especially
Narnia, being the kind of hits that legacy studios have spent a century chasing, and thus
convincing the legendary streamer that theaters are here to stay.