Scottish Delight James McAvoy To Star In BBC Series ‘His Dark Materials’

Absolute Scottish delight James McAvoy is locked in for the BBC series His Dark Materials – the series adaption of the fantasy trilogy by Phillip Pullman.

If you haven’t heard of the series before then cast your minds back to 2007 when The Golden Compass was a thing. That ol’ flick was actually based on book one, Northern Lights, of the trilogy by Pullman. Book two is The Subtle Knife and book three is The Amber Spyglass. In other words, the trilogy sounds like something you’d curl up with on a chilly day with a warm cuppa and get completely lost in.

The coming-of-age trilogy tells the story of orphan Lyra Belacqua and her friend Will Parry. Together the two travel through parallel universes that includes witches, ~ Dust ~,  and badass polar bears. In the first novel, Belacqua goes searching for her rebellious uncle Lord Asriel, played by McAvoy.

Lord Asriel’s a pretty y’huge character in the trilogy so we’ll be seeing a lot of him.

In the 2007 adaption, Asriel was played by James Bond actor Daniel Craig. If the film’s still not ringing a bell, Nicole Kidman also co-starred as the creepy but charming Mrs Coulter. There was also a giant polar-bear all geared up in gold armour and daemons – Pullman’s fictional beings made of an individual’s “inner-self”. Picture one entity sharing two bodies. These beings take animal form and can also talk.

Here’s the trailer if you want to jog your memory a little:

As per Deadline, the adaption will be an eight-part series and will co-star Logan break-out actor Dafne Keen, The Wire’s Clarke Peters, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. 

To go with it’s extremely strong cast, the series will be directed by The King’s Speech director Tom Hooper and written by National Treasure writer Jack Thorne so it’s sounding promising.

McAvoy confirmed the news via his Instagram with a cheeky snap:

It’s still pretty early days so there’s no news yet on a release date but we’ll keep you updated.

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