Greta Gerwig Got Led Zeppelin to Say Yes to “Stairway to Heaven” for Her ‘Narnia’ Trailer

Robert Plant and Jimmy Page routinely turn down requests to put “Stairway to Heaven” onscreen. Greta Gerwig got a yes. The song scores the first trailer for Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, which Netflix released Tuesday (Oct. 13), and it swells just as Meryl Streep’s Aslan takes shape in a burst of light, Billboard writes.

It isn’t the album version. Louder calls it heavily remixed, with Plant’s vocals isolated and drenched in reverb and Page’s solo clattering in harder than ever. Watch it below.

Gerwig made the case in person. She told Stephen Colbert at a New York IMAX event hours before the trailer premiered that Plant and Page are fans of C.S. Lewis’s books, Rolling Stone reports. “I talked to them about a lot of the themes of the film,” she said. “They saw the heart and the story and the drama in it.” On why the song fits: “It’s an epic song,” she said. “It’s about the two paths of good and evil … It is a spiritual quest and a spiritual journey. So to me, this was a song that made sense to introduce the film to the world.”

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Page was on board. “I am thrilled that she chose Stairway To Heaven in the trailer for her film,” he said, per Louder.

That is rare air. Louder notes the band turned down requests for Wayne’s World and Almost Famous, though it has loosened up lately: “When the Levee Breaks” turned up in Argo and The Big Short, “Immigrant Song” in Thor: Ragnarok and “Black Dog” in this year’s The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth. And “Stairway” never charted on the Hot 100 because the band chose not to release it as a U.S. single. It became a radio staple instead and helped lift Led Zeppelin IV to No. 2 on the Billboard 200 in December 1971, Billboard notes.

The film is Gerwig’s first since Barbie, an adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s 1955 prequel with David McKenna and Beatrice Campbell as Digory and Polly, Daniel Craig, Carey Mulligan, Ciarán Hinds and Emma Mackey as Jadis. As on Barbie, Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt are scoring it, Rolling Stone reports, and a pre-screening playlist at the New York event ran through David Bowie, The Rolling Stones and Todd Rundgren, per Billboard.

The Magician’s Nephew opens in theaters Feb. 12, 2027, for a five-week run, the first wide theatrical release for a Netflix film, then reaches the service April 2. It fits the streamer’s growing theatrical push.