The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass is a fantasy film based upon Northern Lights (titled The Golden Compass in the US), the first novel in Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials, and was released on December 5, 2007 by New Line Cinema. The story concerns Lyra, an orphan living in a fantastical parallel universe in which a dogmatic dictatorship, the Magisterium, threatens to dominate. When Lyra’s friend is kidnapped, she travels to the far North in an attempt to rescue him. The project was announced in February 2002, following the success of other recent adaptations of fantasy epics, and at $150 million is one of New Line’s biggest-budget projects ever after a series of box office disappointments preceding the release.