If the embed above misbehaves, the trailer for the film these editions tie into is also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBhgErH84Z0
Every generation gets the Narnia covers it deserves. Some of us grew up with Pauline Baynes’s spidery drawings peering out of Puffin and Fontana Lions paperbacks; others with the brooding painted jackets of the 1990s and 2000s; others still with film stills of the Pevensies looking chilly. Now HarperCollins has unveiled a fresh set for the age of Netflix, by an artist with a remarkably fitting CV.
The publisher’s new movie tie-in editions, timed for Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, give all seven Chronicles “movie-inspired” covers by Vance Kovacs. They roll out from 10 November, when a paperback of The Magician’s Nephew and a seven-book paperback box set arrive, followed by individual hardcovers on 17 November and a hardcover box set on 24 November, which according to its listing also carries interior artwork by Kovacs. There are deluxe collector’s hardbacks of The Magician’s Nephew with exclusive designs at four American retailers, and a slipcase edition exclusive to TikTok Shop and EpicReads, which is a sentence that would have needed explaining to C.S. Lewis very slowly over a pint at the Eagle and Child.
Kovacs is no stranger to Narnia. He worked as a concept artist on all three of the Walden Media films, alongside his long-time collaborator Justin Sweet, and before that cut his teeth at Interplay on Fallout 2 and Icewind Dale, credentials that will make a certain kind of reader very happy indeed. His film work since runs from John Carter and Thor to Werewolf by Night, so he has painted both Barsoom and a Marvel swamp monster. A talking lion must be a doddle by comparison.
The covers themselves are bright, swirly and a touch psychedelic, with Aslan worked somewhere into every one, an approach that the fans at NarniaWeb have largely welcomed. Several have spotted the lion’s odd-coloured eyes, a nod to the Bowie-inspired design Gerwig is using in the film. Not everyone is sold. Some readers feel the Seventies poster-art palette sits oddly with Lewis, and others have noticed that the books are now branded simply as Narnia, with “The Chronicles of” quietly dropped, which one commenter likened to renaming Tolkien’s trilogy The Rings. Lewis, who never minded a good argument, would probably have enjoyed the row.
The editions are listed for the American market, so whether British readers get the same jackets remains to be seen. The film opens in cinemas and IMAX on 12 February 2027 before arriving on Netflix on 2 April; you can read our take on the first trailer here. Most of us already own the Chronicles two or three times over. Lewis wrote seven books, and HarperCollins seems quietly determined that we should buy each of them seven times.
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