Greta Gerwig admits she is “intimidated” about adapting ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’
Barbie director Greta Gerwig has admitted that she is “intimidated” about adapting C.S. Lewis’ children’s classic The Chronicles of Narnia for Netflix.
The filmmaker’s comments come off the back of a record-breaking year at the box office with Barbie. Still, regardless of her recent success, Gerwig maintains that she is terrified about bringing such a widely renowned title to life, a feeling that comes from her longtime respect for C.S. Lewis as a thinker and writer.
“I’m slightly in the place of terror because I really do have such reverence for Narnia,” Gerwig told BBC Radio 4’s Today program. “I loved Narnia so much as a child. As an adult, C.S. Lewis is a thinker and a writer. I’m intimidated by doing this. It’s something that feels like a worthy thing to be intimidated by.”
She continued: “As a non-British person, I feel a particular sense of wanting to do it correctly… it’s like when Americans do Shakespeare, there’s a slight feeling of reverence and as if maybe we should treat it with extra care. It is not our countryman.”
Gerwig’s comments arrived only days after Barbie won the first-ever ‘Cinematic and Box Office Achievement’ award at the Golden Globes for grossing $1.442billion globally last year. “It was very wonderful and emotional to be able to take to the stage with the groups that made it,” she said of the prize.
In other Barbie news, star America Ferrera said that she rejects the critique that Gerwig’s movie is an oversimplified form of feminism. Asserting that not everyone has access to the feminist school of thought, she said: “Assuming that everybody is on the same level of knowing and understanding the experience of womanhood is an oversimplification.”
Watch the trailer for Gerwig’s Barbie below.
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