
Emma Mackey in ‘Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew’ Trailer
Netflix
On top of writing, directing, producing and acting in his new movie The Debut, Jesse Eisenberg took on an additional unexpected role: songwriter.
For the film — which follows a shy housewife (played by Julianne Moore) cast in a community theater production who loses herself in the performance — Eisenberg wrote seven of the original songs that comprise the movie’s central show, called Nosy Neighbors; one of those tunes, “This City May Have Chewed Me Up (But It Hasn’t Spit Me Out),” is getting a best original song awards push.
At a screening on the Fox lot on Monday, Eisenberg joined composer Emile Mosseri and moderator Justin Hurwitz to break down his musical process, teasing, “My brain goes to musical theater cliches more than it goes to like sports or women — my wife! One woman, one woman.”
The star emphasized that he is not classically trained but writes music on the piano or while playing guitar, “and again, the thing I can write is musical theater music. It’s not like I also do like what you do [in composing scores]. This is the extent of my talents and I worked really hard on it, but that’s my ceiling.”
Eisenberg recalled working with Mosseri on 2022 film When You Finish Saving the World and writing a song for Finn Wolfhard’s character. “I sent it to Emile and Emile was so sweet, but he was like, ‘This is really good if he was doing musical theater music, and he’s more doing rock music,’” Eisenberg explained. “And so I was like, ‘OK, can you rewrite the music?’” Mosseri did, but Eisenberg said it made him realize “I’m not a good enough musician to then do jazz or something like more complicated…. I really like musical theater music and I like a lot of songs I’ve written. But like that’s the extent of my skillset.”
Mosseri responded by noting how Eisenberg is “very humble and very sort of downplays his musical prowess because he wrote these incredible songs,” as the filmmaker explained that with a story set in the world of the theater, “it gave me permission in a way to make things heightened, because musicals are heightened and silly and absurdist.”
That doesn’t mean he didn’t take the songwriting seriously, though, with Eisenberg explaining, “I wanted to feel like this is a real thing. So I’m making fun of the songs, but when I’m sitting there writing ‘This City May Have Chewed Me Up,’ I’m crying. Like I am feeling the city have chewed me up, Jesse, and it hasn’t spit me out, Jesse. Like it’s very personal, but I knew the context around it is going to feel silly.”
He added that he was particularly inspired by the wave of ’90s musicals that “kind of fetishized New York City,” which he was obsessed with growing up. “All the songs in the movie are like in the spirit of that weird thing, like ‘Finding a good guy in town is like a needle in a haystack,’” Eisenberg joked. “This stuff where like I don’t think any real person who’s self-actualized can relate to that feeling, but they work in the musical theater.”
The Debut hits theaters Dec. 11.
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The first trailer for the Greta Gerwig-directed adaptation of Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew has arrived, plunging viewers into a modernized retelling of C.S. Lewis’ first book in The Chronicles of Narnia. The film arrives in theaters February 10 and on Netflix April 2.
Beatrice Campbell’s Polly Plummer and David McKenna’s Digory Kirke kick off the clip wondering if Uncle Andrew Ketterly is mad after a sheet uncovers the beloved wooden wardrobe that marks the gateway to Narnia.
“Sometimes, one story is the beginning of all others,” a voice that sounds like Ciarán Hinds says as the carved cabinet structure stands tall up in the Ketterly attic.
“Mom always calls him a magician,” Digory tells Polly as Daneil Craig’s eccentric Uncle Andrew picks up the bottom of a green glass bottle.
Digory isn’t sure if he believes in magic, or if he’s ready to see what’s on the other side of a different wooden door, which opens into Uncle Andrew’s colorful laboratory.
Polly asks if magic is real after picking up a golden ring, and Andrew responds that he is, in fact, a magician.
“See for yourself,” he says as he hands more jewelry to Digory.
The children explore “infinity worlds,” but Digory’s touching a certain magical object before Polly can get to him to tell him not to summons Emma Mackey’s Jadis, the White Witch, who wears silver sparkly eyeshadow and whispers, “Come to me, my power.”

Emma Mackey in ‘Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew’ Trailer
Netflix
She jumps down in her metallic dress and brandishes her silver wand that she uses to cast spells as Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heavean” starts to play.
“Magic, it’s everywhere,” Carey Mulligan’s Mabel Kirke says.
A winged horse leaps into the air off of a cliff, carrying the pair of kids.
“Have you ever seen a world born?” Hinds’ voice returns at the end to ask as the iconic lion, Aslan (who will be voiced by Meryl Streep), is formed out of some sort of cosmic dust to roar.
The cast of Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew also includes Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Denise Gough and Susan Wokoma.
The film is produced by Mark Gordon, Amy Pascal, Vincent Sieber-Smith and Greta Gerwig. Executive producers include Patricia Whitcher, Racheline Benveniste, Christine Crais, and Douglas Gresham and Melvin Adams for the C.S. Lewis Estate.
Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt wrote an original score, and George Drakoulias serves as music supervisor. Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC, is director of photography, James Chinlund is production designer and Lee Sandales is set decorator.
Jacqueline Durran is costume desgnor, Ivana Primorac is hair & makeup designer, Paul Franklin is visual effects supervisor, and Barry St. John is visual effects producer.
Editing was done by Andrew Weisblum, ACE, Nick Houy, ACE and Wyatt Smith, ACE. Nina Gold put the cast together. Neal Scanlan serves as creature effects creative supervisor, and Michael Eames serves as animation supervisor.
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Jesse Eisenberg has not yet seen The Social Reckoning, but he has some thoughts on the subject, he told Deadline on Tuesday.
In an interview about his new film The Debut, which he wrote and directed, and in which he also stars, Eisenberg addressed his feelings on Aaron Sorkin‘s follow-up to The Social Network, in which Eisenberg had originally starred as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg back in 2010 — a role he passed on reprising for The Social Reckoning and which is played this time by Jeremy Strong.
“I haven’t seen the movie yet. It just came out… I have a thousand million thoughts about the movie,” Eisenberg told Deadline.
“I love the script and I love Aaron Sorkin so much, and it was such an honor to be in the first movie, if you can call it the first movie, and, I just didn’t want to be associated with that guy again and go around and do a year of press, where I’m talking about something which I know nothing about, because I’m not on that platform as a user, and I’m not interested in that kind of technology as a person. I just don’t want to be a representative of it. But, no, I’m sure the movie is wonderful.”

Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg in ‘The Social Reckoning’
Leah Gallo/Columbia Pictures/Everett Collection
Asked how it feels now to have left that role and the tech world behind, Eisenberg said, “Well, I was never in the tech world, again, despite what you think, by looking at me from the side, I’m not in the tech world… I think I look like somebody who probably spends the day sitting in front of a computer or a television, but I really don’t.”
Earlier this month, Sorkin told Entertainment Weekly that he’d assumed Eisenberg would return for the sequel. Sorkin said he was “just a couple of pages from being done” with the script for The Social Reckoning when he ran into the actor “and said, ‘I’m gonna be sending you something in a couple of weeks.’ And he smiled and nodded, and I sent it to him. It never occurred to me that he wouldn’t want to do it.”
Eisenberg turned down the role, despite, as Sorkin told Vanity Fair back in June, his having spent a three-day weekend trying to persuade Eisenberg into it.

Paul Giamatti and Julianne Moore in ‘The Debut’
A24
“I knew what the studio was offering him to do it,” Sorkin told EW, “but money does not motivate Jesse. It’s infuriating. If anything, money is a disincentive for him. It’s admirable. He’s very concerned about raising his kids with too much money.”
The Social Reckoning stars Strong alongside Mikey Madison as whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook engineer who leaked thousands of internal documents to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, played by Jeremy Allen White. The film was released by Sony Pictures Entertainment on October 9th.
Eisenberg’s The Debut follows his 2024 film A Real Pain, for which he received a Best Screenplay Oscar nomination with co-star Keiran Culkin winning Best Supporting Actor for his role in the film.
The Debut stars Julianne Moore as a shy family woman who finds a powerful voice through community theater, with Paul Giamatti as the theater’s take-no-prisoners director. It premiered at Telluride on September 9 and is set for theatrical release by A24 on December 11th.
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