Dæmons and armored polar bears! Watch out the trailer for HBO’s His Dark Materials
By Dan Selcke
Game of Thrones is almost over, but if everything goes according to plan, HBO’s reign as the premiere place for gripping genre content has just begun.
To that end, the network just dropped the first trailer for His Dark Materials, an adaptation of Philip Pullman’s popular science-fiction/fantasy story of the same name. Take a look:
His Dark Materials is a trilogy, but the first book follows Lyra Belacqua (Dafne Keen, best known as Laura Kinney / X-23 from Logan), a rambunctious kid raised by her uncle Lord Astriel at Oxford, or rather, at the version of Oxford in this sideways fantasy world where polar bears wear armor and everybody has a dæmon, which is basically a little animal companion that represents their soul. To make a long story short, Lyra overhears some stuff she shouldn’t and is soon caught up in a massive conspiracy involving child abduction, the church and worlds beyond her own.
The story goes to some pretty wild places, but by the looks of the trailer, the first season will stick to the first book. If done right, this could be a terrific three-season series. Please, HBO and the BBC, don’t stretch it out.
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The cast is solid, too. Ruth Wilson (Luther) plays sinister socialite Mrs. Coulter, James McAvoy is Lord Astriel, and Lin-Manuel Miranda plays Texan hot air ballooner Lee Scoresby, which…okay, that last one is a bit of an odd choice, but I’m willing to go with it if the show is good. The first book was previously adapted as the movie The Golden Compass, but it was pretty bad, so this could be a good rebound.
When will His Dark Materials debut? “Soon,” HBO tells us. With Game of Thrones on Sunday, it can’t come soon enough.
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