The Lamppost Question That Produced a Narnia Prequel
An acquaintance once asked C.S. Lewis how the London lamppost had ended up in the middle of Narnia's woodland. As Ars Technica tells it, the question intrigued him enough that he started a prequel in order to find an answer: The Magician's Nephew. It was not a smooth project. Lewis found the book difficult to finish, and he wrote four other Narnia books before completing The Magician's Nephew in 1955. A bit of readerly housekeeping — where did this fixture come from? — turned into an entire novel, and a late one at that.
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Not many prequels begin as an answer to one person's question about a lamppost. This one did — some of the best fantasy infrastructure gets built to cover a small gap.
This is the entry Greta Gerwig chose to adapt for Netflix as Narnia: The Magician's Nephew. She has said she was inspired by 1960s-era David Bowie, though it would not be a musical, and the trailer just released is set to 'Stairway to Heaven.'