Greta Gerwig's next project is giving her 'recurring nightmares'

Greta Gerwig, post-’Barbie,’ says her next big project is giving her ‘recurring nightmares’

Greta Gerwig has a blond bob and smoky eye makeup and wears a black dress.

Oct. 10, 2023 5 AM PT

Greta Gerwig is losing sleep over her next big project.

The “Barbie” writer-director sat down with “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong at the BFI London Film Festival and revealed that her upcoming film was giving her nightmares.

Although the acclaimed filmmaker didn’t name the nightmare-inducing project, the New Yorker revealed in July that Gerwig was set to write and direct two film adaptations of C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia” for Netflix.

“I’m in the writing process,” Gerwig told Armstrong, per the Hollywood Reporter. “And it’s hard because I’m having recurring nightmares.”

In July, Gerwig shared similar sentiments with the “Inside Total Film” podcast, adding that she hadn’t really started wrapping her arms around “The Chronicles of Narnia.”

“But I’m properly scared of it, which feels like a good place to start,” she said. “I think when I’m scared it’s always a good sign. Maybe when I stop being scared, it’ll be like maybe I shouldn’t do that one.

“But ya know, I’m terrified of it,” she continued. “It’s extraordinary. And it’s exciting. I hope to make all different kinds of movies in the course of the time I get to make movies, which is, you know, it’s a long time, but it’s also limited.”

Gerwig added that she hoped to do big and small projects and everything in between and that “having another big canvas is exciting and also daunting.”

After her blockbuster success this summer, Gerwig was immediately pressed on whether she’d ever sign on to make another “Barbie” film. The “Lady Bird” filmmaker told the New York Times in July she couldn’t yet think that far ahead: “At this moment, it’s all I’ve got. I feel like that at the end of every movie, like I’ll never have another idea and everything I’ve ever wanted to do, I did.

“I wouldn’t want to squash anybody else’s dream,” she continued, “but for me, at this moment, I’m at totally zero.”

She also told the New Yorker the same month she wasn’t eyeing any other toy-inspired films. “It would have to be something that has some strange hook in me, that feels like it goes to the marrow,” she said. “I don’t know if there’s a doll that anyone is as mad at.”

“The Chronicles of Narnia” was first adapted from book to big screen for a trilogy spanning the early aughts. The first film, “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” which premiered in 2005, grossed more than $745 million worldwide.

Netflix obtained the rights to all seven “Narnia” books in 2018.