ABSTRACT
Looking back from near the end of the millennium’s fi rst decade, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials has permeated cultural life in Britain, with some version of its infl uence felt across all the major national media. In 2003, the trilogy came third in the BBC’s Big Read competition, adjudged the nation’s ‘best loved’ book, aft er Tolkien and Jane Austen. It was adapted for the National Th eatre, under the direction of Nicholas Hytner, and showed to sellout audiences in London for two seasons (December 2003-March 2004, November 2004-April 2005). A three-part radio adaptation of the trilogy was also broadcast on Radio 4 in 2003, and later issued in CD and cassette form. But the trilogy reached the stratospheres of world renown when a major fi lm adaptation from New Line Cinema was released to mainstream cinemas around the world in early December 2007. Movie gossip and speculation had fuelled the Internet fan sites devoted to Pullman’s trilogy, especially BridgetotheStars.net and HisDarkMaterials.org, for at least two years prior to the release of Th e Golden Compass (so named aft er the American title of Northern Lights, volume one of the trilogy), so the fi lm opened to an audience well primed to experience what the movie trailer promised, ‘the next epic adventure’ ‘from the producers of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings’.1 Philip Pullman’s global success, coming so soon aft er Rowling’s, confi rmed that British fantasy fi ction had become an international crossover phenomenon.2 According to the Los Angeles Times, 15 million copies of Pullman’s trilogy had been sold by December 2007, even before the release of the fi lm adaptation that same month.3
