While Greta Gerwig’s Chronicles of Narnia movie is still a ways away, with very little having been officially revealed about it, the Netflix-produced film already has the potential to fix a major problem that has been showing up in recent years with plenty of fantasy movie and TV show adaptations.

The genre has always been extremely popular when it comes to the media landscape, and many of the most iconic works in the genre have been adaptations of fantasy books. The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones are some of the biggest examples, but unfortunately, not all of these projects manage to come to fruition as well as they did.

Greta Gerwig’s Narnia Movies Can Be A Huge Success For The Fantasy Genre

…At A Time When So Many Adaptations Are Struggling

While the fantasy genre will always be popular, it feels as though many recent attempts to create the next smash hit have fallen flat, not been given the time to shine, or have just not been able to materialize at all, failing before they even get started.

Some of the biggest shows in the genre have been things like HBO’s House of the Dragon, which is one of the more successful recent entries in this genre, building off of Game of Thrones. However, it has been somewhat divisive, specifically season 2, which felt like it came and went without much fanfare.

Other shows, like Netflix’s Shadow and Bone and Amazon’s Wheel of Time, were canceled partway through their runs, only getting a few seasons to begin their stories before being forced to abruptly end, which, to be fair, is a fairly common occurrence these days across all genres. Still, it is disappointing to see these iconic pieces of writing fall by the wayside.

Even projects like The Witcher, which had such a promising initial run, lost its star in Henry Cavill, leading to a significant drop-off in excitement for the show’s future. All of this, alongside projects like the A Court of Thorns and Roses adaptation, which has languished in development for years, has made new fantasy adaptations much less exciting to look forward to.

However, Gerwig’s version of Narnia has the potential to outshine all of these disappointments and become one of the best new additions to the genre in recent years. Not only is Narnia a beloved series that has already been somewhat successfully adapted, but the director herself has a track record as an exceptionally talented filmmaker who could make this project sing.

The most obvious example of this was with Barbie, which was a concept that could’ve easily fallen so flat, but Gerwig managed to make it work incredibly well. The rest of her filmography is even better, making her Chronicles of Narnia movies seem like the sH๏τ in the arm that the fantasy genre needs.