 First Dumbledore gets outed, and now this: New Line, the studio that brought off the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy but can't seem to get its act together on one measly movie version of The Hobbit, is putting its holiday eggs into one $180-million basket called The Golden Compass, a huge-scale fantasy film based on the first volume in novelist Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. The studio that authorized Peter Jackson to go ahead and shoot all of Tolkien's vast saga in one mammoth shoot, to be piece-mealed out to theaters later on an annual basis, is playing it safer this time; though they stand ready to film the rest of Pullman's story if The Golden Compass is a hit, they're going to wait until the box-office returns are in before deciding whether to go ahead with the sequels. The movie is still a serious gamble. For one thing, it marks the solo directing debut of Chris Weitz, who had previously worked with his brother Paul, on comedies (American Pie, About a Boy) nowhere near as expensive and special-effects heavy. Depending on how the movie does, it seems certain to take Weitz's career to a different level, one direction or the other.
Read More...
|