Sorry, Those Posters of Netflix’s 'Chronicles of Narnia' Series Are Fake

So many of us grew up reading C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series — and more than a few probably tried digging around in the back of various closets to find their own escape to a fantasy land as a result. While the books will always be beloved by OG fans, there have also been a number of screen adaptations that easily captured audiences’ hearts — the big ones were the three TV serials from the BBC and the three big-budget films that came out in 2005, 2008, and 2010.

In October of 2018, Netflix announced that they had purchased the rights to C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series and had plans to create not only multiple movies but also a series. So... what ever became of that? Is Netflix making a Chronicles of Narnia reboot or what?

According to Fortune, Netflix and the C.S. Lewis Company’s 2018 multi-year deal marked the first time that one company has held the rights to all seven books of the series. Although Lewis himself never sold the rights to his book series, his estate made several deals after his death — that’s how we got the adaptations that have been made so far. 

However, while there have been several adaptations of the beloved series, no company has ever been able to adapt all seven books. Disney was the first production company to bring the stories to the big screen, but they only managed to complete two films (The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and Prince Caspian) before dropping out due to budget issues. Fox took over for the third film (Voyage of the Dawn Treader), but after it failed to perform well at the box office, the series came to an end.

Things have been pretty quiet on the Netflix Narnia front since the deal was signed, but on May 27, 2020, we finally got some news... or at least, we thought we did. Twitter user @CelineBrianna shared what looked like promotional images for the upcoming series! Even more exciting was the fact that there was a promotional image for every single one of the books in the series. Alas, the news was a bit too good to be true.

As people looked closer at the promotional images, they realized that some of the photos were a bit suspicious. For instance, the sword in the image for The Last Battle? That’s Oathkeeper from Game of Thrones. Eventually, it was discovered that the promotional images were not from Netflix at all. Rather, they were fan-made images made in anticipation of the series.

In other words, there’s nothing new to report at this time about Netflix’s Narnia series. But don’t let that discourage you! According to The Hollywood Reporter, it cost the streaming giant nine figures to secure the rights to the book series. You don’t spend that kind of money unless you plan to follow through. 

Considering that the first book in the series came out approximately 70 years ago, we suppose we can wait a little longer for Netflix’s adaptation. (Hopefully not too much longer, though!)