I'm still upset that they killed off the "Golden Compass"

[G_j]

whatever the reason, it's a shame, I thought the Golden Compass was a wonderful film.
I also enjoyed the book "The Last Temptation of Christ" and although the movie wasn't great in my opinion, many people were deprived the possibilty to see it for themselves, because of church pressure.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/dec/15/golden-compass-sam-elliot-catholic-church

Who killed off The Golden Compass?

Sam Elliot believes the Catholic church killed off any chances of a sequel to The Golden Compass, but the truth may be far simpler


After the success of Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy looked a dead cert for epic fantasy book franchise success. In 2007, when first installment The Golden Compass was released, it looked to have all the right ingredients: moppet actors, spectacular battles, a sexy baddie, Ian McKellen, snow. But no sequels were made. Why?

Actor Sam Elliot thinks he knows. According to an interview in the Evening Standard, Elliot – who basically played himself in The Golden Compass – is pinning the failure of the series directly on the Pope, saying: "The Catholic church happened to The Golden Compass, as far as I'm concerned. It did incredible at the box office. Incredible. It took $85m (£52m) in the States. The Catholic church … lambasted them, and I think it scared New Line off."

He could have a point. The Golden Compass was the subject of a prolonged attack from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, who proclaimed it to be "atheism for kids", and Fox News's Bill O'Reilly who, with typical restraint, apparently called the film a "war on Christmas". The attacks shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone. Pullman has always been impressively vocal in his atheism, plus writing a book about some children literally murdering God is probably as overt an anti-Catholic statement as you can get – but there's something about Elliot's argument that doesn't quite ring true.

..more..

[negativenihil]

1. ok so...

i've read the trilogy of books the movie was based on... and let me tell you - the movie was poor

If you enjoyed it - go read the books! they are SO good. All in paperback now or easily available from your local library.

[G_j]

2. I've been meaning to

check them out, you have given me extra incentive to do so.

[negativenihil]

3. awesome!

...might I also recommend The Hunger Games trilogy?

[G_j]

4. heard good things

they actually made the film in and around Asheville, NC, where I live. Hope it lives up reasonably to it's source. People are excited about it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. I'm not an atheist, and I think the books are wonderful

and in their own way, very spiritual.

Pullman has done something that is difficult for any author to do: create an internally consistent and best of all, interesting, alternative world in a way that allows you to visualize it.

I agree that the movie was not nearly as good as the book, but it's a book that would be difficult to do justice to.

[Mojorabbit]

7. I loved the movie and was hoping for a sequel. nt

[Sheepshank]

8. Granted, the movie wasn't the same as "the book"....but it still served a purpose in my family....

opening up discussion about manipulation, magical thinking and group think.

[southernyankeebelle]

9. I didn't read any of the books however, I do have the movie and we really enjoyed in my

family. I didn't get anything religious in the movie at all. I don't get it.

[Ready4Change]

10. I liked, but didn't love the books as others did.

I thought the books were ok, but I didn't have the enthusiasm for them that others did.

And even with that, I didn't think the movie did the book justice. There are times when I feel a movies director 'gets' the book, and times when I think the director is going through the motions, checking off boxes as he goes. The movie of "The Golden Compass" was, I think, an example of the latter. Much of it was nice to look at, yes, but I kept becoming acutely aware of the staging and sets and FX, rather than being engaged in the story and emotions.

Now, I don't think the movie was BAD. There have been worse movies made of books which I dearly loved ("Dune" as my most painful example.) But "Compass" hardly left me chomping at the bit for a sequel, or a middle of three, particularly since middle movies are often the least engaging element of a trilogy.

[TheManInTheMac]

11. Sam Elliot must be losing it. The movie lost a hundred million dollars.

Only an idiot would make a sequel.

[gratuitous]

13. I don't know anything about this

But I do know that if a movie made a bucket of money, Hollywood will forge ahead on even the worst schlock, hoping to milk every last penny from an idea or an actor. This is my only explanation for the continued careers of Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell (neither of whom I care for), or Ben Stiller (who I like, but who plays the same character in every movie). If the Golden Compass movie made money, the dream factory wouldn't hesitate for an instant in churning out movies based on the rest of the series, Catholic Church or not.

[TheManInTheMac]

14. Exactly. As for the Catholic Church, they also condemned "The Exorcist" which

turned a tidy profit.

[Swede]

16. I thought it lost also.

But worldwide receipts show it made a tidy profit.


The Golden Compass

Domestic Total Gross: $70,107,728
Distributor: New Line Release Date: December 7, 2007
Genre: Fantasy Runtime: 1 hrs. 53 min.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 Production Budget: $180 million

Total Lifetime GrossesDomestic: $70,107,728 18.8%
+ Foreign: $302,127,136 81.2%

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

= Worldwide: $372,234,864

http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=goldencompass.htm

[TheManInTheMac]

20. Oh, that is a surprise.

[Son of Gob]

23. Advertising and marketing is not included in the production budget.

Usually a film has to double it’s production costs in order to turn a profit.

[Yo_Mama]

28. Right, and "gross revenue" is not what the studio gets

Gross revenue is what the public actually pays to go see a movie - studios get around 45% of gross? In the US, at least.

The film was a box office bomb in the US, and then the studio sold the international rights, so they probably took a pretty big loss on it. They were going to make a sequel, but I think the recession nixed that.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_is_Golden_Compass_2_coming
http://filmonic.com/could-the-golden-compass-be-joined-by-the-subtle-knife

According to Wikipedia, Time Warner had really owned New Line for a while, and in 2008 they took it over:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Line_Cinema

New Line Cinema was merged with its parent company Warner Bros in 2008.[9] The financial failure of The Golden Compass was largely blamed for the decision, in which New Line spent more than $200 million on the promotion of the film, yet only grossed $70 million in the US market[10].

If they hadn't sold off the international rights eventually they would have recovered their money, but I guess they were short cash and intimidated into doing it by the awful US box office take.

[HopeHoops]

12. The imagery in the books is incredible. Directly translates to film. Okay, concepts pissed you off

This coming from a group of guys who milk money out of the poorest to create grand temples to themselves and despite never getting laid somehow magically know what's right for a woman's own body. Have any of them ever been to a $2 movie theater?

[flamingdem]

15. The visual effects were very expensive

and difficult. I don't know if it was a money maker though it got the Oscar for effects.

[Moonwalk]

17. While the hostility toward the film did it no favors, it really had less to do with it...

...then the fact that it just didn't make enough money. Let us remember that Harry Potter also came under attack by religious groups. But there were differences. Harry Potter was world famous and selling like crazy--Golden Compass was popular, but not on the same level. Also, Harry Potter was a very simple story, with very iconic characters (plucky, underdog hero, good friend, smart girl), iconic setting (boarding school) and iconic villain (big evil). Golden Compass had none of that. The plucky heroine is sly and mercurial, not so easily understood or connected to as a brave, abused boy who finds out he's magical and special. In GC, it's not quite clear who the big villain is or why he/she is going what they're doing. We can all understand "I want to take over the world!" but "I want to strip children of their demons because...."???

If you have to explain why you're doing this bad thing, you've lost the audience, especially if that audience is kids and their parents.

Golden Compass required that viewers learn the world--all about the demons everyone had, the different classes and tribes of people, the magic, the politics...in a book, one can slowly learn all this as the story draws one along. But it's a lot harder in a movie. In a movie, people need to latch onto the familiar, especially if they think it's a children's movie. Harry Potter was straight out Halloween stuff. Magical candy, flying brooms, dragons, ghosts, latin-sounding spells. But Golden Compass required a learning curve. A girl who can manipulate a complex magic compass requires people to pay attention, not just get it like a wand blasting out power.

To add to this, it was a very expensive movie to make. All those CGI animals that had to move along with all the people. Remember, a movie has to make twice what it cost to break even. I'm afraid The Golden Compass cost too much and made too little in Hollywood terms to get invested in, unlike Harry Potter which everyone knew would be a gold mine. Trust me, Hollywood will ignore all complaints from any religion no matter how big or powerful if what they're making will make a lot of money.

[Zalatix]

18. If you piss off a large demographic, they won't come to see your movie.

Granted, I never read the book so I don't know about the whole "murdered God" thing. The movie looked downright awesome. A universe with magic and technology blended together in a steampunk-looking world was what drew me to see it.

Problem is the Golden Compass came with baggage that alienated it from large swaths of the American populace.

Aside from Atlas Shrugged being a crappy movie I am quite sure this is what drove the biggest stake in that movie's heart: the movie had a reputation, as did the author behind it, as well as the movement that pushed its production.

If you put up a well-made movie about America getting its ass kicked once and for all in a war you couldn't expect it to sell well, either.

The Golden Compass forgot the Golden Rule of movie-making... don't piss off large segments of your potential audience. That includes Democrats, men, women, Catholics, patriotic Americans, or whatever. Offended groups just might use their freedom of speech to launch a boycott against you. We can't begrudge them of that. We did the same thing to Atlas Shrugged.

[MisterP]

19. the movie was filmed in TiVo and had way too many cooks

then again, what were they gonna do when they got to "The Amber Spyglass"? it was a bloated "Revenge of the Sith" where his Ian-Paisley-like views took over and made the plot push the characters around, rather than vice-versa

[zappaman]

21. I was working at New Line Cinema at the time

They were looking for another trilogy and decided this would be the one.
Then they gutted the one interesting thing about it because they were afraid of offending anyone.
Not sure if the church put pressure on them, or if they did to themselves as a pre-emptive measure, but the outcome was the same.
All they did was end up shooting themselves in the foot as the fans were pissed and those that didn't know the trilogy were not interested. And let's face it, the movie was not that good.
Just one of the many mistakes that led to the company going under...

[RadiationTherapy]

22. There are also the gay angelic couple, the love of which Pullman writes amazingly.

[ikri]

24. The screen-writer and director did a better job than the church at killing the trilogy

I've read the books and thought they were excellent and should have translated well to the screen but the film itself was woeful.

If you've seen the film without reading the books then it might be OK as a slightly bland kids film but it's such a botched rewrite of the book that it's almost painful to watch, knowing what's missing and having to constantly ask why parts of the book had been cut out.

Only people who truly love the source material should be allowed near book-to-screen conversions or they end up pissing off fans and generally fucking things up.

[zappaman]

25. Don't blame the screenwriter or the director.

Blame the execs at New Line who were scared of bringing God into it and demanded the movie be watered down for the lowest common denominator.

[felix_numinous]

26. Aw I loved the film and the books too-

how insecure in belief do people have to be to be threatened by fantasy stories?

[CrawlingChaos]

27. Just as well really - the third book is truly awful

Mind you, I liked the first book, loved the second and then...(thud)... that turd of a finale. It was alternately silly (in a bad way) and dull (in a major way). It was so bad it put me off Pullman's books altogether.

I have to agree that the Catholic Church being against something has never been a commercial killer, to say the least. It's not like the producers didn't know what they were wading into at the outset, so I'm sure they were ready to make the significant changes necessary to create a commercially viable product. Catholic outrage usually just means free publicity.