# Greta Gerwig Opens the Door to a Very Different Narnia

> Greta Gerwig has cast Meryl Streep as the voice of Aslan, and the choice asks a bigger question than what the lion should sound like.

By Adrian Drayton · 22 October 2026 · Features

Canonical: https://insights.uca.org.au/articles/greta-gerwig-opens-the-door-to-a-very-different-narnia/

Recently Gerwig revealed this tantalising bit of information to Empire magazine and it is difficult to imagine a more intriguing piece of casting for one of the most recognisable characters in children’s literature.

For many people, Aslan already has a voice. In the recent film adaptations of The Chronicles of Narnia, that voice belonged to Liam Neeson. His deep, resonant delivery became closely associated with the character, giving Aslan a sense of authority, power and solemnity. Neeson voiced Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

So hearing Meryl Streep instead is going to take some getting used to.

And that may be precisely the point as Gerwig has explained that she wasn’t simply looking for a famous actor to provide a recognisable voice. She wanted something more specific. Speaking to Empire, she said she wanted someone “profound but not pretentious”, with gravitas but without “morose self-seriousness”, someone who could communicate both “depth and pathos” and “joy and delight”. She also wanted an actor over 70 whose age could bring wisdom and experience while still possessing “fresh wonder, like a child”.

Her choice, then, makes considerably more sense when you think about Aslan not simply as a majestic lion, but as a character who carries enormous emotional and spiritual range.

Streep can whisper. She can command. She can be funny, frightening, tender, mysterious and deeply human. As Ryland Grace notes in Project Hail Mary “Meryl Streep can do anything.” She can make a character feel ancient and vulnerable at the same time.

That is a very different proposition from simply asking, “What should Aslan sound like?” Instead it may be asking, “What should Aslan make us feel?”

This matters because The Magician’s Nephew is itself a different kind of Narnia story. It takes us back to the beginning, to the creation of Narnia, and to the moment when Aslan sings the world into existence. Gerwig has spoken about being captivated by that idea as a child, describing Narnia as a “world made out of music”. Her film is apparently embracing that idea quite literally, drawing heavily on the music and visual culture of the 1970s, including David Bowie and other rock artists.

Even Aslan’s new appearance reflects that approach. The first images show a strikingly different version of the lion, including heterochromatic eyes and a visual design influenced by Bowie.

And this is where the inevitable debate among Narnia fans begins.

For some readers, Aslan isn’t simply a character who can be freely reinvented. He is at the theological and emotional centre of Lewis’s stories. Lewis deliberately constructed Aslan as a Christ figure, and for readers who have carried these books with them since childhood, his voice, presence and character can feel almost sacred.

The interesting detail is that Gerwig has not, at least according to the information released so far, changed Aslan into a female character. Aslan remains referred to as “he”. Streep is providing the voice.

We have become accustomed to thinking that the gender of an actor should necessarily correspond to the gender of the character. Animation and visual effects make that assumption even less necessary. Aslan is a fictional lion brought to life through performance, voice, design and technology. There is no reason a female actor cannot embody a male fictional character.

But that doesn’t mean fans have to feel entirely comfortable with it.

Part of the relationship we have with stories is built around familiarity. We create our own Aslan while reading Lewis’s words. We hear the voice. We imagine the face. We decide what the character feels like. When a filmmaker comes along decades later and gives us another interpretation, there can be a strange sense of intrusion, particularly when the story has been important to us for most of our lives.

Yet there is another truth worth remembering.

The Magician’s Nephew is a work of fiction. It is a story that has already been interpreted by generations of readers, illustrators, actors, filmmakers and audiences. Every adaptation necessarily makes choices about what to emphasise, what to change and what to leave alone.

That doesn’t mean every interpretation will work for every person. It doesn’t mean fans shouldn’t question Gerwig’s choices. And it certainly doesn’t mean that fidelity to Lewis is irrelevant.

Perhaps the more interesting question is not whether Meryl Streep sounds like the Aslan we already know, but whether she can reveal something about Aslan that we haven’t heard before.

Liam Neeson’s Aslan carried the weight of a lion who seemed to have existed forever.

Perhaps Streep’s Aslan will carry the wisdom of someone who has seen the universe being born and perhaps that is exactly what Gerwig is looking for.

There is something rather fitting about that approach. Lewis wrote a story about a world being created through song. Gerwig is taking that world and creating it again through another medium, another generation and another artistic imagination.

Some fans will love it and others will struggle with it. Some may never accept it as their Aslan.

Stories that matter to us rarely belong entirely to the people who created them. Once they enter our lives, we carry our own versions of them.

The wonderful thing about Narnia is that there has always been room for more than one doorway into the wardrobe.

Now Greta Gerwig is opening another one.

Filed under: Narnia, The Magician’s Nephew, Greta Gerwig, Meryl Streep Aslan, Greta Gerwig Narnia, The Chronicles of Narnia, Narnia movie, Netflix Narnia, Aslan voice cast, faith and film, Christ figure in Narnia, book adaptations, Christian film