New poster and artwork revealed for Narnia film

February 12, 2027. That date is now stamped on a poster that sent Narnia fans into overdrive on October 12, 2026, less than 24 hours before the first official trailer was confirmed to drop. Netflix moved fast, and the artwork it put out speaks louder than any teaser copy.

A poster built around a single, striking image

The visual centerpiece is impossible to miss : Aslan's silhouette in profile, his mane dissolving into a field of stars, his shadow consuming almost the entire frame. It reads less like a movie poster and more like a cosmological diagram. The cosmos itself seems to exist inside the Great Lion, a deliberate reference to the novel's founding myth, where Aslan literally sings a world into being. That single image distills the whole premise.

At the heart of the composition, two tiny riders on a winged horse cut through a burst of prismatic light. Readers will immediately recognize this as Digory and Polly on Fledge, formerly Strawberry, the London cab horse who carries the children westward in C.S. Lewis's book. Their scale against Aslan's silhouette is intentional : these are small humans inside something much larger than themselves.

The tagline above reads simply : "A Universe Begins." Below, the layout mirrors the official logo release, with the "A Film by Greta Gerwig" billing, the Narnia wordmark, the theatrical date, and a credit for the IMAX experience. Netflix is not treating this as a streaming drop. It is positioning the film as a full theatrical event, and the poster design reflects that ambition.

Netflix also released a widescreen version of the artwork for the film's official title page. This horizontal take shifts Aslan's silhouette to the right and opens the left side into a swirling nebula of blues, lilacs, and creams that resembles paint dissolving in water. If you want a closer look at how radically this visual language departs from the Walden Media and Disney trilogy, Greta Gerwig's Narnia reimagined covers the full scope of that shift. The tone is cosmic, painterly, and unambiguously new.

What the Empire exclusive already revealed about the cast and creative vision

The poster arrived weeks after Empire ran a world-exclusive multi-day feature in September 2026 that delivered the first real look at the film. That coverage confirmed what had been one of the most debated casting questions in recent streaming history : Meryl Streep will voice Aslan. Interestingly, Streep recorded a brief vocal cameo for Project Hail Mary between sessions for her role here, which says something about the production schedule she was juggling.

The Empire feature also revealed that this version of Aslan draws directly from David Bowie : heterochromia, red facial stripes, a deliberately glam and otherworldly aesthetic. Gerwig has described her approach to the story as a rock opera, citing Bowie and The Who as touchstones. The film also moves the timeline from the novel's 1900 setting to the 1950s, a shift that opens up the visual and musical references considerably.

Two of the central villains got their first-look images during that same Empire run. Here is a quick summary of what was shown :

• Daniel Craig as Uncle Andrew Ketterley, surrounded by glowing beakers and light-bending equipment in a cluttered study. Gerwig described the character as "the stupidest magician in the world who actually made magic," which is a sharper read of the character than the books sometimes allow.
• Emma Mackey as Jadis, the sorceress, dressed in a glam-rock costume built around shimmering, armor-like fabric. The visual distance from Tilda Swinton's ice-queen look in the earlier films is significant.

Empire also published an exclusive subscriber cover from concept artist Jaime Jones, showing Aslan creating Narnia. It is the kind of production art that makes the cosmic register of that new poster feel fully intentional.

Release dates, theatrical window, and what to expect from the trailer

The film's theatrical strategy deserves attention on its own. Netflix originally had Narnia : The Magician's Nephew slated for 2026, but the release was pushed back to secure a proper theatrical window. The updated schedule looks like this :

That gap between theatrical and streaming represents a 49-day exclusive window, the longest Netflix has ever committed to for an English-language film of this scale. Outside North America, Sony Pictures Entertainment handles distribution. For anyone tracking where and when to watch, the streaming date of April 2, 2027 on Netflix is the one to bookmark.

The full cast includes David McKenna, Beatrice Campbell, Carey Mulligan, Ciarán Hinds, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Denise Gough, and Susan Wokoma, alongside Craig, Mackey, and Streep. That lineup, combined with Gerwig's direction and a rock-opera sensibility applied to the creation of an entire universe, sets expectations at a level the trailer will now have to meet.

The trailer confirmed for October 13 at 2 PM ET (7 PM BST) is the first moving footage anyone outside the production has seen. Given the momentum built by the Empire coverage and now this poster, the pressure on that two-minute window is real. Watch how Gerwig handles Aslan's song. That scene, more than any other in the book, is where this adaptation will either earn its ambition or expose the limits of it.