{"id":774920,"date":"2026-09-18T17:18:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T17:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/774920\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T17:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T17:18:11","slug":"first-look-at-daniel-craig-in-narnia-the-magicians-apprentice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/774920\/","title":{"rendered":"First Look At Daniel Craig In Narnia: The Magician’s Apprentice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Across his career, Daniel Craig has dealt with major character archetypes: he\u2019s played the super-spy, as James Bond<\/a>. The ultimate detective as Benoit Blanc in the Knives Out<\/a> films. And now, we\u2019re about to see him play a magician. More specifically, the magician of The Magician\u2019s Nephew, in Greta Gerwig\u2019s adaptation<\/a> of C. S. Lewis\u2019 Narnia stories. It\u2019s Craig\u2019s Uncle Andrew that sets the whole affair in motion, a man who has spent his life tinkering with magical objects and artefacts, with life-changing results for his young nephew Digory (David McKenna) and neighbour Polly (Beatrice Campbell).<\/p>\n

Since Andrew\u2019s attention is firmly on all things sorcery, it comes at a cost to the people in his life that he should care about. \u201cI\u2019d like to say that his intentions are good, but I\u2019m not sure that they are,\u201d Craig admits to Empire. \u201cIt\u2019s not to say that he\u2019s cruel and mean and awful. He gets overexcited about what could be, and therefore overlooks the people around him and the consequences of what he\u2019s doing.\u201d In Gerwig\u2019s words? \u201cHe\u2019s the stupidest magician in the world who actually made magic,\u201d the writer-director puts it. Andrew\u2019s actions have ramifications not just for Digory and Polly, but for Aslan (voiced in Gerwig\u2019s film by Meryl Streep<\/a>), the nefarious Jadis (Emma Mackey), and the fundamental existence of Narnia too.<\/p>\n

Craig\u2019s love of Narnia goes right back to his childhood, when he devoured The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe in a single sitting. \u201cI stayed up all night and read it,\u201d he remembers. \u201cIt was the first time I started a book and finished it near dawn, and I\u2019d never read a book cover-to-cover before.\u201d Here\u2019s hoping, all these years later, that he and Gerwig are ready to make magic.<\/p>\n

\"Empire<\/p>\n

Read Empire\u2019s full world-exclusive Narnia: The Magician\u2019s Nephew cover<\/a> story \u2013 going on set with Greta Gerwig and her cast, including Daniel Craig, Emma Mackey, and Meryl Streep, to get the first word on her epic fantasy adaptation \u2013 in the November 2026 issue, on sale Thursday September 24. Pre-order a copy online here<\/a>. Narnia: The Magician\u2019s Nephew comes to cinemas from February 12, 2027, and comes to Netflix from April 2, 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Across his career, Daniel Craig has dealt with major character archetypes: he\u2019s played the super-spy, as James Bond.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-774920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}