New Line Cinema's The Golden Compass: The First of Three Films Based on the Work of Phillip Pullman

The production company New Line Cinema is about to release Phillip Pullman's well-known trilogy, His Dark Materials, into feature films. The fist of three, The Golden Compass, is due to be released December 7^th of 2007 and will have a star-studded cast including: Nichole Kidman, Dakota Blue Richards, Freddie Highmore, Daniel Craig, Eva Green and Tom Courtenay. The film is also directed and written by the famed Chris Weitz who is known for his work on American Pie and About a Boy. ¹

The story is about a girl on a search for her friend in a parallel world not much different than our own where witches rule the northern skies, an evil protagonist seeks to rule all humanity and every person's soul lives in a form outside of their body, which accompanies them through out their lives. There is an evil plot to destroy this bond between this familiar known in the movie as daemons from the children for evil purposes and children, including the young star's best friend, are tuning up missing.

To add to the excitement of the film, there are also fierce polar bears, Sea Gypsies and expert computer animation . In short, it's a sort of Lord of the Rings meets Harry Potter meets The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. To see a sneak peek trailer of the movie, visit the movie website at GoldenCompassMovie.com .

In order to better understand the conflict here are a few interesting facts on Pullman:

Phillip Pullman is a secular humanist and his positions on organized religion and a lack of belief in a supreme being are juxtaposed to the Christian creed. ¹ When asked what he thought about the controversy about his writing and the film by the Christian community his response was, "I'm delighted to have brought such excitement into what must be very dull lives." ² Pullman and The British Humanist Association, seek to bring freedom of belief and democracy to society by removing all vestiges of religion from law, political policy, education, media or anywhere else.

They believe in inclusiveness and open mutual respect. The National Secular Society seeks to disestablish the church and for the withdrawal of any funding or special privileges given to the church by the state not to exclude their tax exemption status. They seek to remove government funding to any religious organization or program thereby eliminating the positions of clergy within prisons, hospitals or the armed forces. ³

Both book and movie closely intertwine the themes of science, theology and magic, which in conjunction with the author's personal views is perhaps why there has been such controversy over its release. The movie itself is expertly crafted, suspenseful and well acted. It is sure to bring in big bucks at the box office. Although, viewers need be warned that the subject matter and underlying context may be offensive to the Christian conservative community.

The writers for the screenplay have chosen to greatly water down any religious reference and instead make more of a critique of any and all dogmatic organizations. This has been a sore point for Atheist in that they feel the movie is being censored on behalf of religion.

The Catholic Church is boycotting to movie due to the content of both the film and the actual books. Watered down or not they feel it is an assault on Christianity. Interestingly enough, Nichole Kidman who is a catholic feels that the movie is not defaming her church and feels that she is being true to herself and her beliefs.¹

Whether you agree with the Catholic Church or the Atheist community, one thing is for certain; the movie is getting a huge amount of publicity, which will most assuredly help the bottom line profits.