Led Zeppelin allow “Stairway to Heaven” in the trailer for Greta Gerwig's Narnia film

Led Zeppelin have let “Stairway to Heaven” score the trailer for Greta Gerwig's “Narnia: The Magician's Nephew”, Consequence reports. The nearly three-minute trailer uses the guitar intro, the closing bridge and Robert Plant's final line, and ends on Jimmy Page's guitar solo.

The move breaks with three decades of refusals. In “Wayne's World” (1992), the music-shop scene where Wayne starts playing the song was heard only in cinemas; home releases replaced the snippet over licensing disagreements, and only the 2022 Blu-ray brought the short intro back. Cameron Crowe had to cut a scene built around the song from “Almost Famous” (2000), later restored on DVD without the music. The band has licensed other songs, with “Immigrant Song”, “Kashmir”, “When the Levee Breaks” and “Tangerine” appearing in “Thor: Ragnarok”, “Argo” and “Almost Famous”.

The choice ties in with the film's source: Plant is a known admirer of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Speaking at the trailer's premiere in Manhattan on 13 October, Gerwig said, according to Rolling Stone, that Plant and Page saw “the heart and the story and the drama” in the project. She described the song as being about the paths of good and evil, “a spiritual quest and a spiritual journey”.

Led Zeppelin, a hard rock and blues rock band, formed in London in 1968 and split in 1980. “Stairway to Heaven” appears on “Led Zeppelin IV”.