his dark materials and the golden compass

But while the energy is spot on with the books, a few changes have been made here for the screen. Written by Jack Thorne ( Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) and directed by Oscar-winner Tom Hooper ( The King's Speech, Les Misérables), Lyra's steampunk-ish Jordan College bounds off the screen with zeppelin airships, spectacular academic halls, and a soulless, terrifying church. Coulter, and Logan's energetic, brutishly charming Dafne Keen as Lyra Belacqua, His Dark Materials is as punchy, inviting, questioning and captivating as Pullman's original works. Starring James McAvoy as the tempestuous and fearless Lord Asriel, Ruth Wilson as the cunning Mrs. The new co-production from HBO and the BBC soars.

The era of prestige TV, where runtimes matter as little as budgets, is the perfect time for a revived attempt. Production began with director Chris Weitz ( About a Boy, American Pie) at the helm, but he left as pressures to water down the anti-god fervor-the basis for the driving question at the center of Pullman's plot- mounted and budgets got capped. And 2007's feature film, The Golden Compass, which starred Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman, was both a critical and commercial flop.

Nicholas Wright's 2004 play for the National Theatre in London, which separated the 1,300 page narrative between two, three-hour plays while curiously inverting the majority of the drama into a flashback, was met with lukewarm reviews.

The Daemons of His Dark Materials, Explainedīut previous adaptations struggled to capture the magic of Pullman's dense and often scary world.

His dark materials and the golden compass