The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials - Northern Lights), 2007, Nicole Kidman
The Golden Compass is a forthcoming fantasy film based upon Northern Lights (titled The Golden Compass in the US), the first novel in Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials. The story tells of Lyra's adventure to the far north in search of her friend. The project was announced in February 2002, following the success of other recent adaptations of fantasy epics, and at $205 million is expected to be New Line's biggest budget project ever after a series of box office disappointments in the past year. In October 2007, the Catholic League called for a boycott of the film, due to the source novel's anti-Christian themes.
On February 11, 2002, following the success of New Line's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the studio bought the rights to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Directors Brett Ratner and Sam Mendes expressed interest, and in July 2003 Tom Stoppard was commissioned to write the screenplay.
A year later, Chris Weitz was hired to direct after approaching the the studio with an unsolicited 40-page treatment. He rejected Stoppard's script, preferring to adapt Pullman's work himself, and cited Barry Lyndon and Star Wars as stylistic influences on the film. After having visited director Peter Jackson on the set of The Lord of the Rings, on December 15, 2004, Weitz announced his resignation as director of the trilogy, citing the enormous technical challenges of the epic. On August 9, 2005, it was announced that British director Anand Tucker would take over from Weitz. Tucker felt the film would thematically be about Lyra "looking for a family", and Pullman agreed: "He has plenty of very good ideas, and he isn't daunted by the technical challenges. But the best thing from the point of view of all who care about the story is his awareness that it isn't about computer graphics; it isn't about fantastic adventures in amazing-looking worlds; it's about Lyra." Tucker resigned on May 8, 2006, citing creative disagreements with New Line, and Weitz returned to direct. . Weitz said "I'm both the first and third director on the film... But I did a lot of growing in the interim." According to producer Deborah Forte, Tucker wanted to make a smaller, less exciting film than New Line wanted. New Line production president Toby Emmerich said of Weitz's return: "I think Chris realized that if he didn’t come back in and step up, maybe the movie wasn’t going to get made... We really didn’t have a Plan B at that point."
On October 9, 2007, Weitz revealed that the final three chapters from The Golden Compass will be moved to The Subtle Knife to provide "the most promising conclusion to the first film and the best possible beginning to the second." Author Pullman has publicly supported these changes saying that "every film has to make changes to the story that the original book tells - not to change the outcome, but to make it fit the dimensions and the medium of film."Wikipedia
,_2007,_Nicole_Kidman.jpg "The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials - Northern Lights), 2007, Nicole Kidman")