Report: Jacqueline Durran Working as Costume Designer for Narnia?
A recent report suggests that Oscar-winning costume designer Jacqueline Durran may be reuniting with director Greta Gerwig for Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia.
The tip comes from NarniaWeb reader “Rachel”, who attended a special 20th-anniversary screening of Pride & Prejudice in late April. The event took place at the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Theatre on West 57th Street in Manhattan and featured a Q&A with Durran. The screening was not publicly advertised, but it was accessible to members of Focus Features’ Insider program, which is open to the general public.
During the Q&A, Durran spoke about her longtime collaboration with Pride & Prejudice director Joe Wright and expressed a desire to work with him again. The two have previously teamed up on six films: Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, Anna Karenina, Pan, Darkest Hour, and Cyrano.
Then almost as a throw away [Durran] added that she had also worked with Greta Gerwig on multiple occasions and was doing so again.”
While she didn’t mention the title by name, Gerwig’s current project is an adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew for Netflix, with filming expected to begin this summer. Given the timing, it’s easy to speculate that Durran was referring to Narnia.
Durran is certainly no stranger to working with Gerwig. She designed costumes for both Little Women and Barbie, earning an Oscar nomination for each. Her other notable credits include Beauty and the Beast, Blitz, and 1917.
If Durran is involved, she would join a growing list of acclaimed department heads confirmed to be working on Narnia, including production designer James Chinlund (The Batman, The Avengers) and director of photography Seamus McGarvey (Atonement, Godzilla).
As always, we’ll keep you updated as soon as anything is officially confirmed.
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Does anyone know who the costume supervisor will be? I’m sure Jacqueline will be great!
Even without this report, I thought there was a pretty decent chance Durran would be involved in Narnia, but now I’m confident. I’m excited to see what the costumes for Jadis and the world of Charn will look like!
It feels like most of our key production members are in place now, with hair and makeup being the main exception. Hopefully we find that out soon!
Makes sense. Gerwig clearly trusts Durran, and Durran’s worked with Gerwig, Seamus McGarvey, and James Chinlind before so there’s some strong artistic synergy here.
Is Gerwig working on any other projects right now? If not, I’d say it’s pretty likely Durran is talking about Narnia!
I really like it when we get updates like this! I’m excited to see what the costumes look like too, especially the ones in Charn. I hope they keep it similar to the books, I love Jadis’s dress.
Wouldn’t be rather interesting if once she gets to our world, she forces Uncle Andrew to buy a dress befitting royalty in our world, and once she gets to Narnia it slowly morphs into something else? That way we could have a costume in LWW that is cold and icy but looks vaguely familiar. It would bring some continuity to the two different films, especially if they are filmed far apart.
I feel like the Walden Films set a really high bar on costume design – one of the few areas (along with sets and props) where I would really struggle to find any fault. Genuinely top tier work.
I’m sure Jacqueline Durran is more than up to the challenge though!