http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2015/his-dark-materials

If they can pulls this off with the same kind of production value we saw in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, it will be great.

So good to see another try at bringing this to the screen after the movie was a bit of a flop. I trust the BBC won't "kidify" it like the movie did, and with the time a TV series has to develop, will fully flesh out the world.

 

Please let this be a success.

 

Precisely my feelings on this.

Maybe the Catholics that shot their mouths off about the movie can do their part to pull the broom out of their collective ass this time.

A lot of the shortcomings of the movie can be laid at the feet of people trying to make it less offensive to the church, knowing full well nothing was going to make them happy when it came to adapting this series.

I remember my niece's Catholic school even passed out papers they wanted the children to sign, agreeing not to see the movie.

 

Age 'em up, I say.

This has me interested. Also, holy shit, has it really been 9 frikkin years since the movie? I feel old.

 

Cautiously optimistic. Same quality as Jonathan Strange would be nice to see but comparing it to GoT or the Sopranos seems to be setting the bar at an unreachable height.

 

It's been thirteen years since a friend lent me Golden Compass... I'm with ya.

A slight age up is probable, but several plot points make big age-ups (cf: GoT's aging up of most of the younger cast) tricky. Doable, definitely, but it's a fine line. I wouldn't be surprised to see 13-14, but 15-16 would seem odd if not properly explained in the story.

 

Ugh, we have to go through this every time something we love is adapted to screen. I really hope it's good, because I loved the shit out of this series. I had my son read them as a counterpoint to The Chronicles of Narnia, and he loves to watch film adaptations of books he's read.

This could be such a fantastic thing if they would just adapt what's there, and not try to make it palatable to people it was skewering in the first place.

 

That's... actually a fantastic idea.

Hope this gets a better reception than the movie. The last time it was adapted to screen, they even discontinued the trilogy past the first movie; even with the whitewashing of the religious themes present in the book, and even given the fact that the third book felt a bit like a chore to read, I was kinda disappointed I never got to watch the sequels. And since it's a TV show, hopefully the level of detail they go into would be satisfactory.

 

Yeah, a lot of the plot hinges on the supposed innocence and purity of children, before they become tainted by dust/sin.

Casting all the child characters 90210 style would kind of bollocks that up, not to mention make Lyra's cleverness and bravery, and Will's heroism less of a big deal.

Lyra is 12 at the beginning of the series and 13 at the end (the book Lyra's Oxford is set two years later, and in it she is 15).

 

Yep. I'm so in. One of my favorite series.

Re: ages. I hope they push to keep them the same, for the reasons Warlocke pointed out.

It's hard to find actors that age who can really pull it off, but it's not impossible.

 

That's interesting. I love the series, it's one of my all time favourite stories. However, when I talk to people who didn't like it I always find that they struggled to get past the first, and if they succeeded they enjoyed the following books a lot more.

I actually found the third the most exciting, as a young lad it explored a lot of really excellent ideas that I had never encountered before.

I agree with what you said though, even with the shitness of the golden compass film I would've watched the sequels.

I hope to fuck they do this right.

 

Interesting that New Line is still keeping their grubby paws on the rights. And I like the sound of Pullman listed as executive producer. If he's got creative input they might not drop the ball.

Now all he needs to do is finish the Book of Dust...

 

Something always felt "off" with this series to me, but I haven't read it in a long time now.

 

Eh. I did enjoy the books, but my favourite, perhaps oddly, was always The Subtle Knife. I think the older I got, the more irritating I found Lyra at the start of the series. I seem to recall also finding the anti-religion elements a bit on the nose. A decent adaptation could be good though; most of my issues with the series are on the writing side of things.

 

This should be fun. His Dark Materials is one of those great children series that deserves a better movie adaptation than it got (Eragon, A Series of Unfortunate Events, the later Chronicle of Narnia movies). I admittedly didn't fully get all the religious stuff when I was a kid (I'm Jewish), but I loved a lot of the stuff in it. I for one spent some time wondering what my daemon would be (either a raven or an owl).

Making it into a TV show would be a good choice: it would help properly flesh out some of the fun details and give us a good chance to really get to know a bunch of people, like the gypsies.

As for the children, I admit both sides make good points: on one hand, it would be pretty hard to find a decent child actor to play Lyra, not to mention all the other kids in the story. On the other hand, one of the major themes of the story is the transition from innocent childhood to 'corrupted' adolescence/adulthood, which would be harder to demonstrate when the children are all 16. Hopefully, they'll manage to find good, young actors to play the roles.

 

I'm so excited! And so sad at the prospect of having to wait for this.

 

Exactly. Which is why 13-14 could probably work with a bit of creativity (make-up and/or writing, depending on how much detail they give in the show itself), but 15-16 is far, far trickier. I'd prefer same age, but adding a year probably won't break much in both story and casting.

Alternately, if they break out a new Thomas Brodie-Sangster, the actor age is kind of irrelevant anyway.

Didn't check link before clicking, was thinking Let the Right One In myself, was pleasantly surprised.

Glad I'm not the only one who did that.

 

Mine would be this dog.

Look at that beautiful, smug son of a bitch.