July // 2026
Three studios and half of England — How Greta Gerwig filmed Narnia: The Magician's Nephew
Narnia: The Magician's Nephew
No press release, no acknowledgement, not even a working title. And yet for months — from August 2025 to February 2026 — Greta Gerwig filmed one of the most ambitious productions in Netflix history across the streets of London, Manchester and Bradford.
Narnia: The Magician's Nephew 's principal photograph combined on-location filming across England with large-scale studio production at three concurrent facilities: Shepperton Studios, Longcoss Studios, and Cardington. Cardington housed the most ambitious set builds: the world of Narnia, the ruined city of Charn, and the Wood Between the Worlds were constructed here, dwarfed by the hangar dimensions.
The Royal Exchange, the Tower of London and Whitehall
In mid-August 2025, filming began around Bank Station and The Royal Exchange at Cornhill in the heart of the City of London. Lavish sets recreated post-war Britain, with crowds of extras, period flower stalls and 1950s props filling the surrounding streets.
Filming also took place at and around the Tower of London in August 2025 — the production was spotted with Jadis riding into the Tower on horseback.
In early September, Jadis was chased through central London by police on vehicles and bicycles, with filming taking place around the Robert Clive statue in Whitehall and through to Westminster. Over 100 extras participated, including a sequence in which a Royal Marines band service was crashed into by police cyclists.
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St Bartholomew the Great and Old Royal Naval College
In September 2025, the production closed St Bartholomew the Great — the Norman priory church in Smithfield, founded in 1123 and one of the oldest and best-preserved medieval interiors in London — to the public from September 9, with a scheduled reopening on September 18. St Bartholomew the Great has appeared in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love and The Other Boleyn Girl. Its interior is so authentically ancient that it requires no dressing for period productions.
In January 2026 — the final weeks of the shoot — filming moved to the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, the Baroque complex designed by Christopher Wren, transformed into 1955 London.
Manchester and Bradford
From August 26 to 30, the production filmed at Victoria Baths in Manchester — a Grade II* listed Edwardian swimming complex in Chorlton-on-Medlock. A casting call sought 40 boys aged 11 to 14 for a bath sequence, with short neat hair for the 1950s setting, suggesting a boarding school scene.
Bradford followed Manchester as the production's next Northern England location, with filming taking place in Little Germany — the area known for its imposing Victorian warehouse architecture — and at Lister Mills, a large former silk factory. Filming was also confirmed on Cater Street, Currer Street, and Bolton Road/Stott Hill. Bradford residents filmed Jadis on horseback in their streets — one TikTok video was captioned "Narnia filmed in my back garden."
The film premieres in cinemas on November 26, 2026, with a Netflix streaming debut on April 2, 2027.
SOURCE
What's on Netflix // NarniaWeb // Gamereactor // Countryfile // Yorkshire Live // IMDb
CREDITS
© Pascal Pictures, C.S. Lewis Company // Behind scenes screenshot HomeMadeArcade
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