Do we like Greta Gerwig?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent record, a public stand at a cost to her own past work, and no harm found, but the sources I could open are thin on charity and trans issues.
Gerwig is one of the biggest names in modern film, and she wears her influences openly. At the Narnia preview she said of C.S. Lewis’s books: “I would not be who I am without these books.” In 2024 she was jury president at Cannes, which says plenty about how the industry rates her.
Her one real moral stoush is the Woody Allen one, and she handled it well. Gerwig had acted in his 2012 film To Rome With Love. In January 2018 she told the New York Times she would not have taken the part had she known then what she knows now, and that she would not work for him again. She said Dylan Farrow’s accusations made her realise she had added to another woman’s pain, even though she grew up on his films.
On the harm test, I found nothing. There are no slurs, no conspiracy theories and no campaigning against anyone’s rights in what I read. I also found no statement from her on trans issues either way, so that is a gap, not a tick. Her recent work is with Netflix, Meryl Streep, Daniel Craig and Carey Mulligan, and nothing in that company raises a flag.
Her Barbie film drew plenty of fire from conservative critics in 2023. Gerwig told the New York Times she hadn’t anticipated it, noting “there’s a lot of passion”. She said she hoped the film invites people to let go of things that don’t serve them as women or men. Being the target of right-wing pile-ons is not a mark against her.
The fresh fuss is Narnia. Netflix moved The Magician’s Nephew from late 2026 to a wide cinema release on 12 February 2027, then streaming on 2 April. The trailer pulled 34 million YouTube views in two days. Some conservative commentators object to Streep voicing Aslan. Gerwig hasn’t directly addressed Aslan’s gender, but she called Streep’s casting a matter of wanting a voice that is “profound but not pretentious”. She also said “Faith has been a thread through all of my work”, and faith is never a fail here.
The good stuff is real but mostly on-screen and on-record. She took a public stand on Allen, she stands behind stories about women, and the industry trusted her with the Cannes jury. I couldn’t verify any big charity work in the pages I opened, and I won’t pad it. This is a person with a clean sheet and a lot of talent, not a saint with a foundation.