HBO’s His Dark Materials has great ambitions to take the place of Game of Thrones in the hearts of fantasy-fans around the world. And given the complexity of the world created by British author Philip Pullman, it may also manage to do it. During the TCAs on Wednesday, His Dark Materials producers Jane Tranter and Jack Thorne had the chance to better explain their intentions within this series (via Indiewire). And the producers wanted to underline that the show won’t attack religion or faith.
“One of the great things about His Dark Materials is the conversations about religion,” Jane Tranter said. “Philip Pullman in these books is not attacking belief, he’s not attacking faith, he’s not attacking the Church per se; he’s attacking control. And the idea that control can be twisted and used to [oppress people]. At any time it can be personified by an authoritarian church or organization, and in our series it’s personified by the Magisterium, but it’s not the equivalent of any church in our world.”
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When Jack Thorne took the microphone, he admitted that writing the series was challenging.
“We wrote papers to ourselves about all the different ideas in the show,” Thorne added. “We wanted to do a PhD in Philip Pullman and we tried to do a PhD in ‘His Dark Materials’. I wrote 46 drafts of episode one in order to find a way to tell this story as elegantly as possible. [Pullman’s] denseness is a blessing and a curse; it’s so exciting. Sometimes when you’re doing an adaptation of something there’s a moment when you know everything there is to know. With Philip you never can. It’s a very challenging show to write, but also glorious to write.”
His Dark Materials will premiere in late 2019. Do you think that the series will match the level of Philip Pullman’s works? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
