It would be another 12 years before Pullman’s series would be seen again, this time as the BBC/HBO series His Dark Materials.
While New Line Cinema was chasing its parent company’s Potter-backed success with writer/director Chris Weitz’s The Golden Compass, it was also trying to replicate the results of another landmark film series: Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Going as far as casting Christopher Lee and Ian McKellen in the film’s cavalcade of characters, as well as directly invoking that very franchise in the initial phases of marketing, the watered down adaptation of author Phillip Pullman’s controversial YA saga annoyed fans of the books to the point where the modest box office results didn’t seem to signal a continued rally.