A $280 million Netflix movie about two children in 1900s London who lay hands on a magic ring is not a misprint. It is the sharpest indication yet of where the streamer intends to park its fantasy budget once Geralt puts down the swords.
Season five closes out The Witcher, and it is expected on Netflix in 2027. The successor isn’t a single series. It’s a pair of franchises heading in opposite directions: C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, and Magic: The Gathering, the 30-year-old trading card game that became Hasbro’s first $1 billion brand and counts more than 50 million players worldwide.
The Narnia bet is bigger than it looks
Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew arrives on Netflix April 2, 2027. Before that, though, it opens in cinemas around the world, IMAX screens included, on February 12 — a two-month theatrical window from a company that has spent ten years arguing cinemas are beside the point.
Nothing like it has happened at Netflix before, and it says plenty about the studio’s confidence in Gerwig and in the property itself. There are numbers behind the confidence: the three earlier Narnia adaptations released by Fox took in more than $1.5 billion worldwide between them.
Gerwig is adapting The Magician’s Nephew for the screen for the first time. It’s the origin story — how Narnia was made, where the lamppost came from, who the White Witch was before she became the White Witch. Two children touch a magical ring, tumble into the “wood between the worlds,” and everything begins from there.
At a reported $280 million, it ranks among the priciest films the streamer has ever made, which goes some way toward explaining the theatrical rollout. If any genre deserves the big screen, it’s this one.
Magic: The Gathering has been stuck for six years
The animated Magic series was announced back in 2019, with Marvel’s Joe and Anthony Russo attached as producers. Then silence. The project came back to life in 2024 with Star Trek: Picard showrunner Terry Matalas on board, and then went mostly quiet again.
A recent Netflix press release described the show as “upcoming.” A single word, and it counts as the most substantial news on the project in the two years since Matalas joined. Understated, but it means the series still has a pulse.
Animated fantasy is where Netflix already wins. Arcane. Castlevania. The Dragon Prince. The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf and Sirens of the Deep. A Magic show slots into that roster with no friction at all.
The format is enjoying a wider moment, too. Tolkien’s Middle-earth showed up in the animated feature The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, while Prime Video has Hazbin Hotel and The Legend of Vox Machina.
The Witcher was worth the mess
Between a live-action show soon to run five seasons, a limited series the critics savaged and a handful of animated projects, the Witcher universe is one of Netflix’s largest properties. Getting there was bumpy: Henry Cavill left, and the original seven-season roadmap was trimmed to five.
It still counts as a win. The franchise gave Netflix a foothold in high fantasy before live-action One Piece was on the board.
Season five will most likely follow Geralt as he hunts for Ciri in the wake of his dealings with Queen Meve, while Yennefer tightens the net around Vilgefortz, the series’ real villain.
The genre is costly and it is brittle. Netflix pulled the plug on Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone after two seasons, even with an eight-episode spinoff already scripted. Prime Video ended Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time after three seasons and absorbed a wave of fan anger over it. An existing book or gaming audience guarantees nothing — not even a proper ending.
When these shows connect, though, they build a kind of long-term loyalty no other genre can match.
There’s a third project, and a fourth that died
Also in development at Netflix is Ravenloft, a live-action Dungeons & Dragons series with John August writing and executive producing, Alfonso Cuarón executive producing, and Hasbro Entertainment involved. A different D&D show, Shawn Levy’s The Forgotten Realms, was previously in development at the streamer and has since been scrapped.
The rest of the field is stacking up as well. HBO continues to grow George R.R. Martin’s Westeros and is readying its Harry Potter remake. Disney+ has Warrior Cats. Apple TV, long the sci-fi house, is at last stepping into fantasy following an unprecedented deal with bestselling author Brandon Sanderson. Prime Video is behind The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and God of War. Even Peacock, NBCUniversal’s smaller entry, is chasing the genre with a live-action take on Matt Dinniman’s science-fantasy LitRPG series Dungeon Crawler Carl.
Romantasy is eating the development slate
The genre’s other engine is romantic fantasy — romantasy, if you’ve spent any time online over the past three years. Prime Video is developing Rebecca Yarros’ dragon fantasy Fourth Wing along with Lauren Roberts’ Powerless trilogy. Netflix is reported to have paid a seven-figure sum for the film rights to Callie Hart’s Quicksilver.
Ever since Game of Thrones broke out at HBO, fantasy has largely made its home on television. Netflix’s slate makes the case that the genre needn’t choose: live-action series, animated series and theatrical film, all running at once.
Which returns us to that lamppost. In February 2027, in IMAX, a child from London will step into a snowy wood and find it burning.