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CANNES, France - First came Harry Potter, then The Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia.
Now young audiences have The Golden Compass to look forward to, a big budget adaptation of the first of British author Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy which is likely to be followed by two more.
US film maker Chris Weitz is directing the US$180 million (91.4 million pound) picture, based on The Golden Compass (also known as Northern Lights), which stars Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and Derek Jacobi among others.
The Golden Compass tells the story of precocious 12-year-old Lyra Belacqua who embarks on a quest to save her friend, encountering on the way parallel worlds and the wilds of the icy north as well as adult duplicity, repression and evil.
British schoolgirl Dakota Blue Richards was chosen from some 10,000 girls who turned up to audition for the part of Lyra.
Darker than J.K. Rowling's hugely successful Harry Potter books, studio New Line Cinema will be hoping that adults will also pour into cinemas in December, when the film opens.
Although the movie is not yet finished, its makers and some of the stars were at the Cannes Film Festival to promote The Golden Compass and show off a 10-minute reel of highlights in a publicity ploy popular with Hollywood studios.
The clips suggest the film will be an action-packed adventure featuring computer-generated animal "daemons" accompanying the characters, talking polar bears, the cavernous dining halls of Oxford University and a stunning-looking Kidman.
No dumbing down
Weitz said he would not be "dumbing down" the books for the sake of mass accessibility, and would limit the number of special effects sequences, which can become "pretty tedious".
"There has to be simplification for a film," Weitz said.
"Part of my job is to keep it complex. The storyline has to be very clear but at the same time I would be doing a disservice to the book if I didn't have all kinds of complicated little things going on," he told reporters.
He added: "It's easier to adapt a bad book than a good one."
Craig, best known for his portrayal of James Bond in Casino Royale, said one of the strengths of Pullman's trilogy was that it raised serious issues, including how organised religion could abuse its position of power.
"I think raising the issue about controlling for their own ends to subdue them (people) has got to be questioned," he said, before adding that human emotion was the story's key element.
Weitz, 37, who directed hits About a Boy and American Pie, is widely expected to direct the last two films based on Pullman's series, assuming The Golden Compass performs well. They are expected to be made in 2008.
New Line will be hoping for a repeat of its success with Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, which earned nearly US$3 billion at the global box office.
The first four Harry Potter films sold tickets worth around US$3.5 billion and the first film based on C.S. Lewis' Narnia tales earned US$745 million, according to www.boxofficemojo.com.
Unlike the Potter novels, Pullman is not particularly well known in the United States, presenting a publicity challenge for New Line in that key market.
- REUTERS
