©Courtesy of Warner Brothers 

Greta Gerwig’s streaming adaptation of C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia is scheduled for release at the end of 2026. The much-anticipated film will first be screened in 1000 IMAX theaters on November 26, Thanksgiving Day, and have its Netflix debut a month later, on Christmas Day.

According to the official news release, the IMAX-Netflix partnership “underscores the value of IMAX as a global event platform and reinforces its relationships with the world’s greatest filmmakers. It also demonstrates IMAX’s commitment to bringing unique events and experiences to its fans and exhibition partners around the world.”

Lewis’s seven Namia books have sold more than 115 million copies globally. Gerwig was given the green light to develop the film in 2020, two years after announcing the project. She is best known for directing the Barbie blockbuster that grossed $1.44 billion for Warner Bros., its most lucrative production ever. It won eight Academy Award nominations and clinched an Oscar for the song “What Was I Made For?” Gerwig had earlier directed an adaptation of Little Women and won an Oscar nomination for directing Lady Bird.

 

Sources report that negotiations were not easy, despite the promise of lucrative returns. As IndieWire’s Tony Maglio put it, “IMAX is able to tell its exhibitors what to program — Narnia would’ve been in no theaters if it didn’t get IMAX exclusivity — so that wasn’t much of an obstacle. A far-larger one was Netflix’s history — and past comments — getting in its own way. That took about a month to get past. ‘It was fairly complicated,’ our source said.”

Netflix typically prefers to have its productions debut on its own platform, though there have been exceptions to this game plan. For example, in 2022, the streamer allowed Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery to have an exclusive one-week run on more than 600 screens.

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