New Line Cinema is apparently feeling pretty good about their upcoming movie adaptation of the first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Even though The Golden Compass won't arrive until late-2007, they're already planning to make a movie out of the second book.
Variety reports that New Line has hired Hossein Amini to start work on a script for The Subtle Knife, based on book two in the His Dark Materials series. Amini's writing credits include the failed 2004 Heath Ledger movie The Four Feathers, and the 1996 Kate Winslet incest movie Jude. Bad though it was, The Four Feathers was at least an epic. Amini's not a total stranger to the genre.
Though they're working on a script, New Line's president Toby Emmerich insists that the second and third movies will not be made unless the first movie makes a big pile of money. That may explain why they're hiring someone like Amini to write His Dark Materials: The Subtle Knife, since he probably comes cheap they aren't investing all that much in a movie that may never get made. If they do decide to shoot it, expect rewrites.
While the first book is primarily about one character, a little girl from an alternate universe named Lyra, The Subtle Knife adds in a 12-year-old boy from our universe with the power to cut his way between different dimensions. It's actually a better book, and the third one is even better still. It's kind of a shame that their cinematic potential depends on the performance of a movie based on the weakest part of the series. Still, His Dark Materials fans shouldn't be worried. If a terrible fantasy movie like Eragon can make nearly $100 million worldwide, then His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass ought to be able to recoup it's $150 million price tag easily.
