If, by some tragedy, you didn’t read the His Dark Materials trilogy when you were younger, allow me to give you a brief synopsis of the books: Two pre-teens from parallel universes use a very, very, very sharp knife to attempt to destroy God. The books, by British author Philip Pullman, acted as something of an antidote to the heavy-handed religiosity of The Chronicles of Narnia and, despite the trilogy being concluded back in 2000, they have never been completely adapted to the screen.
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Some of you might remember The Golden Compass, a one-off film adaptation of the first book that was released back in 2007. Despite featuring such highlights as Sam Elliott playing a hot air balloon cowboy, Sir Ian Mckellen voicing a talking, armoured bear, Ian McShane as another talking, armoured bear, and Daniel Craig as a very handsome man (hard to believe, I know), the other two adaptations never came about thanks to the movie’s less-than-impressive performance.
All is not lost, though, the BBC is working on contorting the books into a TV series, with one eight-episode season in the can and another eight-episode season already in production. Season one wrapped up filming last year and is expected to come out some time this year. It’ll star Dafne Keen (the terrifying murder-child from Logan) the the show’s protagonist, Lyra, Hamilton star Lin-Manuel Miranda as the cowboy balloonist Lee Scoresby, the not-quite-as-imposing-as-Daniel-Craig James McAvoy as Lord Asriel, The Wire‘s Clarke Peters as Master of Jordan College Dr Carne, and television and theatre actress Ruth Wilson as Mrs Coulter.
Tom Hooper has been signed on to direct, who you might know from such works as The King’s Speech and the 2012 incarnation of Les Misérables.
Wrap your eyes around the trailer right bloody here:
Not a lot to be gleaned from the trailer quiet yet but it certainly does seem to look like they make it up to Svalbard in the first season. All we know for sure is that his materials will definitely be dark.
