Horse 3535 - King Aslan Is A Girl Now?

https://variety.com/2026/film/news/greta-gerwig-narnia-david-bowie-meryl-streep-aslan-1236865755/

Greta Gerwig is reuniting with her “Little Women” star Meryl Streep on “Narnia,” the director’s adaptation of the C.S. Lewis fantasy series. Streep is voicing Aslan, the mythical lion who creates the mystical world of Narnia.

“I wanted someone who was profound but not pretentious, who had gravitas but not morose self-seriousness. Someone who could communicate depth and pathos as well as joy and delight,” Gerwig told Empire in a cover story about the upcoming film. “I wanted someone who was older than 70, so there was a wisdom of experience, but who also had the capacity of fresh wonder, like a child. And also to be one of the greatest actors to ever do it. That list is not a long one.”

- Variety Magazine, 17th September 2026

I want you to think about this for a second. This is deliberately done as an agent provocateur action. They hope this will make you mad. They know exactly what they are doing. 

What should we do about this?

1. Acknowledge what game they are playing.

2. Just laugh at them.

3. And then strike back with apathy.

To be perfectly honest, giving Aslan a female voice isn’t daring or profound or some brilliant act of creative genius. What this actually is creative vandalism pretending to be artistic sophistication. There already are adaptations of the Narnia stories; so this thing really can not add anything else, or anything new to what has gone on before. What this actually is is more ideological slop produced by the machine that’s given us plenty already.

If you drill down into the mechanics of what is actually going on here, this should be seen in the same light as Mindy Kaling's Velma. Casting Streep as the voice of Aslan isn't arrogant, it's just stupid. Stupidity is the active art of choosing to do something foolish. What Gerwig has done, is be handed one of the most famous set of works of Christian fiction in 20th century, and decided that it needed her brilliant editorial correction. Or perhaps to take this to its logical conclusion, it would be like casting Macaulay Culkin as Lucy Pevensie.

The fact that Gerwig’s comments that, “Meryl Streep is one of the greatest actresses alive,” is kind of irrelevant. Granted that Nancy Cartwright plays Bart Simpson, or Miss Piggy was played by Frank Oz and is now played by Eric Jacobson, the fact is that the character of Aslan as he exists within the story is not someone with an interchangeable identity. He is the King of Narnia. He is the Son of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Within the universe, what the role demands is a voice which is capable of projecting power, and a sense of utter terror...

In other words, Liam Neeson who was cast in the 2005 Narnia series, was perfectly cast for the role. I have no idea what they are going for by casting Meryl Streep the role. 

Also within the text of the books, CS Lewis was explicit with what he was doing within the universe: 

"Supposing there were a world like Narnia, and supposing Christ wanted to go into that world and save it, what might have happened?” Since Narnia is a world of talking beasts, Christ would become a talking beast there—specifically a lion, matching the biblical title "The Lion of Judah"."

- CS Lewis

In Lewis' own words, Aslan isn’t some generic figure within a fantasy story. CS Lewis explicitly conceived of Aslan as what Christ might be like if the Son of God entered a world like Narnia. What this is ultimately doing is taking what is ultimately a devotional depiction of the sacred and twisting it to serve anti-Christian agendas. I wonder if Greta Gerwig and/or Meryl Streep would have been that comfortable making a story telling the life of a Mohammed character and doing the same treatment. Ha ha ha, it's just a bit of fun?

Religious objections aside, this is why people distrust modern adaptations of literature. Greta Gerwig has not entered the world of Narnia with any kind of humility or respect for the source material. Why should she? She doesn’t care. She knows better. To be fair, I don't think that Narnia needed Greta Gerwig to make it interesting; or in fact to make any kind of new adaptation at all.

Look, if you want to make a movie about a magical lioness voiced by Meryl Streep, knock yourself out. But at some point you should have enough integrity to admit that your reinterpretation is more important to you than faithfully adapting it.

On the other side of the coin, since where talking about the commercial decision to do this, then who is this for? Presumably the first and immediate audience of Christians have already been alienated, the people who would object to this on both sides of the religious argument have already been alienated; so who does this leave? The people who like Mindy Kaling's Velma? All 23 of them?