As ‘His Dark Materials’ author Philip Pullman announces a new trilogy set in the world of Lyra Belaqua, The Magisterium and souls that look like cuddly animals, we take a look back at the failed 2007 attempt to bring the fantasy saga to the big screen.

What’s a studio to do when it has just stormed the global box office to the tune of nearly $3bn by adapting one of the most famous fantasy sagas of all time, JRR Tolkien’s sprawling ‘The Lord of the Rings’, and there is no obvious followup? In the case of Warner Bros offshoot New Line in 2007, it seemed eminently sensible to plunge straight into another much-loved series of novels, acclaimed British author Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ series.

Dakota Blue Richards’ Lyra Belacqua rides panserbjørn Iorek Byrnison (Credit: New Line) More

At the time, the screen rights to ‘The Hobbit’, which would later become stretched, wrenched and squeezed into Peter Jackson’s second bash at a big screen Tolkien trilogy, were still in dispute during rights holder MGM’s infamous mid-noughties crisis. But here was a saga of spectacular scope and ambition, a tale tackling all the big subjects, from the hegemony of organised religion to the treachery of adults and the sweet seduction of sin itself, while also throwing in lionhearted talking polar bears, evil golden monkeys and a wonderfully steampunky vision of alternative England where magic still rules. New Line would adapt Pullman’s first book ‘Northern Lights’ into a film titled ‘The Golden Compass’, after the ornate clockwork contraption upon which it centres, and put the final two novels into production provided it made money.

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The movie was handed a staggering $180m budget – the studio’s biggest ever – and Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman was cast as the scheming Mrs Coulter. Daniel Craig, the future James Bond, signed on to play the enigmatic Lord Asriel, and unknown 12-year-old Dakota Blue Richards agreed to play main character Lyra Belaqua, the Oxford orphan who finds herself on a Blakean odyssey through a sublime world of swooping witches, brave Gyptians and cruel clerics. After at one point walking away from the project for fear he did not have the experience to pull off Jackson-style feats of CGI genius, ‘About a Boy’s Chris Weitz agreed to return as director and main screenwriter. And that’s where it all began to go wrong.





From the very start, it appears New Line was determined to present ‘The Golden Compass’ as an unwieldy continuation of its ‘Lord of the Rings’ triumph. In the film’s debut teaser trailer (above), the one ring of Sauron even morphs into the alethiometer (golden compass) used by Lyra to plot her next move, while voiceovers in later efforts suggested that the evil Magisterium is out to recover the machine – a theme that was never so explicit in the book.

Not content with enveloping Pullman’s very different saga in a mist of Tolkienisms, New Line parachuted in ‘Lord of the Rings’ Christopher Lee for a minor role as a Magisterium official, and upset Weitz by ditching young British actor Nonso Anozie (later to find fame in ‘Game of Thrones’) as the voice of ice bear Iorek Byrnison in favour of Ian McKellen, aka Gandalf.

(Credit: YouTube/New Line Cinema) More

The studio also ordered opening scenes marked by voiceover scenes heavy on exposition – in complete contest with the book’s softly softly approach to revelations about the Magisterium, the child-catching gobblers and the sinful, magical phenomenon known as dust – with French actor Eva Green (Serafina Pekkala) doing a passable imitation of Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel at the beginning of ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring’. Last but certainly not least, producers engineered a cut in which the final three chapters of ‘Northern Lights’ were completely lopped off, ostensibly to be retooled into the opening of followup ‘The Subtle Knife’ – except that movie was never made.

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