Netflix's Narnia Reboot May Be Hurting Itself by Choosing Movies

Netflix now holds the rights to all seven of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia novels, a rare and prestigious piece of fantasy intellectual property, but the streamer has opted to adapt the books as feature films rather than a television series. That choice risks compressing stories first published between 1950 and 1956 into relatively short runtimes, leaving less room for the kind of patient storytelling many recent fantasy adaptations have favored.

The Chronicles of Narnia are largely episodic, with each volume telling a mostly self-contained tale and long spans of time passing between installments. Under the current plan, each book will receive three hours or less on the big screen, which could make it difficult to re-establish setting, characters, and Narnia’s layered history from scratch for every new entry.

Television has proved an effective home for sprawling, episodic novels; Apple TV’s Foundation offered one model for handling broad timelines and shifting casts, and other adaptations have benefited from the extra runtime.

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