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THE STORY
Lyra’s World
Daemons and Dust: The Language of The Golden Compass
CHARACTERS
Lyra
Mrs Coulter
Lord Asriel
Of witches, aeronauts and armoured bears
THE FILMMAKERS
A Note from Director Chris Weitz
Into this Wild Abyss: Adapting the Golden Compass
THE CAST
Dakota Blue Richards
Daniel Craig
Eva Green
Nicole Kidman
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Click through to view photos of all the characters in The Golden Compass.
PHOTOS
AUDIO SLIDE SHOW OF MRS COULTER AND LORD ASRIEL
The Golden Compass upcoming new movie releases starring Eva Green, Nicole Kidman, Dakota Blue Richards, Sam Elliott and Daniel Craig
Official Golden Compass movie blog: Free Celebrity Blogs and Video Blog Sites about Daemon Types and the Alethiometer
About His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass New Release Movies: Release Date December 7, 2007
Watch new movie trailers
from the new upcoming 2007 Golden Compass fantasy movie. See the latest celebrity photos of actors
Nicole Kidman
,
Eva Green
,
Daniel Craig
,
Sam Elliott
, and
Dakota Blue Richards
at the official New Line Cinema movie site.
About His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass
"The Golden Compass" is an exciting fantasy adventure, set in a parallel world where people's souls manifest themselves as animals, talking bears fight wars, and children are mysteriously disappearing. At the centre of the story is a 12-year-old girl, Lyra, who sets out to find and rescue her best friend, Roger, and ends up on an extraordinary quest to save not only her own world, but ours as well.
"The Golden Compass" stars Nicole Kidman as the impossibly glamorous and possibly dangerous Mrs. Coulter, Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel, a ruthless adventurer and scholar with a mysterious past, and the talented newcomer Dakota Blue Richards, who won the role of Lyra after an exhaustive search throughout England. Casting directors Fiona Weir and Lucy Bevan considered some 10,000 girls. They screen tested dozens of girls between the age of ten and 13. Finally, they found their Lyra in Dakota Blue Richards: 12-years-old, with no previous acting experience. In the words of producer Deborah Forte, Richards' screen test was stunning, an opinion echoed by
Philip Pullman
when Forte showed him the test.
The film is based on the first book (published as "The Golden Compass" in US and "Northern Lights" in UK and Europe) of
Philip Pullman's
best-selling, award-winning trilogy, "His Dark Materials". The screenplay for "The Golden Compass" was written by Chris Weitz. He first read
Philip Pullman's
trilogy when he was in England directing "About a Boy" in 2000.
"I had heard about a fantastic and life-changing British fantasy series of books. I was absolutely stunned by the imagination, daring and intelligence of the books. To me it is one of the great works of imagination in the twentieth century. I grew up on Tolkien but this, to be honest, leaves him in the dust as far as ambition and philosophical depth. At least, that is how I feel, and that is how anyone attempting to film a book should feel - utter commitment.
"It offers everything a filmmaker would want - a compelling story, fascinating characters, psychological and philosophical depth, and wonder. Although the heroine is a child, there is nothing childish or silly about 'His Dark Materials'. It is often dark, even somber, though like all great novels it ranges to the ecstatic, the humorous, and the political as well."
The immense scope of the book required a similar breadth of vision as a movie. Fortunately New Line Cinema and Scholastic Media were equal to the challenge. To recreate
Philip Pullman's
creations, they spared no expense hiring a crew as talented as it is experienced. Only the best in visual effects would be sufficient to realize the astonishing world of Lyra Belacqua and her daemon, Pantalaimon.
Oscar and BAFTA winning production designer Dennis Gassner ("Field of Dreams", "The Truman Show", "Road to Perdition") has allowed his imagination full reign - from Oxford colleges to the vast snowy wastes of the far north, home of the armoured bears; from the sophistication of Mrs. Coulter's London to the bustle of the Gyptians port, Svalbard, with its clapboard buildings. Magnificent architecture in Oxford and Greenwich and Chatham historic docks supported a whole raft of imaginative sets at Shepperton Studios.
Oscar nominee Ruth Myers ("LA Confidential", "Emma", "Infamous", "The Painted Veil") accepted the challenge of creating costumes for a parallel universe and every day she seemed to outdo herself.
Emmy award winning cinematographer Henry Braham ("Flyboys", "Nanny McPhee", "Bright Young Things") is the lighting cameraman. The editor of "The Golden Compass" is Academy Award winner Anne Coates, who cut her editing teeth on "Lawrence of Arabia" for David Lean. More recent credits for the BAFTA and Oscar nominee include "Erin Brockovich", "Out of Sight" and "In the Line of Fire". Academy Award winner Peter King ("Lord of the Rings") is the make-up and hair designer, a role he also fulfilled on "King Kong" and "Thunderbirds".
A fantasy film of the complexity of "The Golden Compass" must inevitably pose many challenges to cutting-edge visual effects. This is in the hands of supervisor Mike Fink ("Constantine", "X2", "Mothman Prophecies") and producer Susan MacLeod ("Son of the Mask", "Blade II", "Hollow Man").
The scope of "The Golden Compass" is massive, challenging the ingenuity and talent of every department - and filling Shepperton Studios with stage after stage of fabulous sets, props, and effects in order to bring
Philip Pullman's
fantasy epic to life.
"The Golden Compass" will open in cinemas in December 2007.
