You can’t keep a best-selling young adult fantasy novel trilogy down! The BBC has announced it’s making an eight-part miniseries based on Philip Pullman’s best-selling, critically acclaimed His Dark Materials book series.
In 2007, of course, New Line made a big-budget film adaptation of the trilogy’s first volume, The Golden Compass (which is known in its native U.K. as Northern Lights, in case you see that title floating around). The movie tanked, but perhaps the smaller screen will be a better fit for Pullman’s world of shape-shifting animal companions and less-then-benign theocracies. Certainly the BBC did wonders with its recent miniseries adaptation of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which was equally complicated in its own way, although a His Dark Materials adaptation will have many, many more special effects needed.
Right now there are no details—not a release date, nor is Variety clear about whether this “initial” miniseries will cover the entire book trilogy, or just The Golden Compass/Northern Lights. I’m guessing the latter, but we shall see.
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