Following Greta Gerwig making Barbie an even bigger cultural phenomenon with her 2023 blockbuster, the filmmaker is currently hard at work getting her Narnia movie ready for production for the people who have a Netflix subscription to watch in 2026. Ahead of filming reportedly scheduled for this summer, casting rumors are starting to surface. After Charli XCX’s name came up for the role of The White Witch last week, Daniel Craig has become the second name to be associated with the project. However, the role he’s up for isn’t what I expected.
Daniel Craig Is Reportedly In Talks For Narnia, But As An Unexpected Character
As Deadline reported on Wednesday afternoon, the former James Bond actor allegedly “has an offer” to star in the Narnia movie. While that report doesn’t name the character he’s being eyed for, What’s On Netflix claims he’s being considered for the role of Andrew Ketterly, a.k.a. Uncle Andrew.
If your mind is running a blank over who that is, it’s probably because the character has never been adapted in the prior Narnia movies. While the Walt Disney Pictures film series started with the first book in the series, Greta Gerwig is reportedly skipping to the sixth book in the series, The Magician’s Nephew. The book was published in 1955 after the first five books, but serves as a prequel to all the other books before it. In fact, if you had the set of books as a kid like I did, it was probably marked as the first one.
Anyways, Daniel Craig’s alleged character of Uncle Andrew would be the main antagonist of the story who has a rather intriguing story. He is a self-proclaimed magician who wanders upon actual magic when his godmother gives him a magical box on his deathbed with demands for him to destroy it. He does not destroy it and uses its magic to perform experiments – which inadvertently leads to the discovery of Narnia by humans. If you recall The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, he would have been a very, very old man or dead by the time the Pevensies find the world through the wardrobe.
I Would Have Thought Daniel Craig Would Play Narnia's Aslan
Reading about what Greta Gerwig is reportedly working on with her Narnia movies certainly has me interested, but confused on her way into the story given the book she’s starting with. I especially would have guessed Daniel Craig more as the lion king of Narnia, Aslan, especially given his commanding voice, but Gerwig clearly has a very different vision for her adaptation than what we’ve seen before. I think I’ll just trust Greta Gerwig either way, especially after what she did with one Little Women character in her adaptation.
Daniel Craig certainly has an ongoing partnership with Netflix, given his third Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man, is set for this fall. It’s been a long time since I’ve read the Narnia books, but seeing Craig play a villain sounds delicious! Now we just need to hear word about Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan earning roles after they missed the boat on Barbie.
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