Ivana Primorac: The Magician’s Nephew is “Daunting” to Work On

In a recently surfaced podcast interview, Narnia’s Hair & Make-Up Designer Ivana Primorac has been talking to the hosts of The Reel Girls Club podcast about getting to work on Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Narnia movie; which she confirms to be an adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew.

Primorac’s remarks begin around the 1:07:26 mark in the episode, which was recorded back in December:

Ivana: […] Greta Gerwig always has an amazing project ahead.

Interviewer: I’ve seen she’s working on Narnia now.

Ivana: And I’m going to do that with her. So that’s kind of daunting at the moment. So that feels like: “How are we going to do that?”

Interviewer: Is it the whole series?

Ivana: No, she’s going to kick off with the first book. So she’s going to do the first book, which is ‘The Magician’s Nephew’. And that one’s never been done before and it’s brilliant. So yeah, so we’re going to do that.

Whilst the fact of Gerwig adapting The Magician’s Nephew has been an open secret for many months now, there has still not yet been any official announcement from Netflix regarding this. Primorac’s comments therefore make her the most senior member of the production team so far to have confirmed that Greta Gerwig’s movie will be an adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew.

Earlier in the conversation, Primorac also discussed how she and the Narnia team have been watching “really old” period films together as part of Gerwig’s preparation process:

It’s interesting because working with Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach recently, they show films every Sunday that inspire them for that particular project. […] everyone who’s going to relevant creatively on that film, in fact, they invite everyone who wants to come, but usually it’s the creatives of the film.

We’ll meet on Sunday mornings in some cinema in London and watch a movie that they find relevant. And that is just the best fun you can imagine. And I’ve seen some films with them that I never knew about, and you can’t even imagine why they would be relevant. And then you watch them and you go, oh my god, that’s so amazing that it’s so relevant. And it’s good to do that collectively as well. So you can all discuss it afterwards.”

Back in March, we speculated that some of the films screened for crew members may have included Baby Face (1933), Ball of Fire (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), The Lady Eve (1941), Young Frankenstein (1974), and All About Eve (1950).

Filming on The Magician’s Nephew is expected to begin in the coming months, though no official start date has been announced.