Philip Pullman Brings ‘His Dark Materials’ To Light at BBC

Philip Pullman‘s best-selling YA fantasy novel The Golden Compass, the first in the trilogy His Dark Materials, was adapted — poorly — for the big screen in 2007 in a critical and commercial Hollywood flop starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. Now Pullman’s work is being adapted once again, this time for television. The BBC is set to co-produce the series, with BAFTA-winning writer Jack Thorne (Skins) adapting. “It is such an honor and a privilege to be given this opportunity to delve into Philip Pullman’s world,” said Thorne. “The His Dark Materials trilogy are vast and glorious books full of beautiful characters and I’m going to work as hard as I can to try and do justice to them.”

Pullman’s fantasy series is probably better suited to several hours of television rather than a two-hour movie. The complex story involves science, magic, and theology. It concerns young Lyra Belacqua and her adventures in several parallel universes in which people’s souls live outside their bodies as shape-shifting ‘daemons.’ The world is a theocracy ruled by The Magisterium (also known as ‘The Church’) and Pullman’s books have been criticized for their apparent “anti-Christian agenda” and for “selling atheism to kids” (a controversy that no doubt contributed to the movie adaptation’s poor box-office).