How Game of Thrones paved the way for HBO’s His Dark Materials

HBO’s His Dark Materials show will premiere in November, and when it does, viewers will get to see something the 2007 film — The Golden Compass — failed to deliver: an in-depth look at the complex characters, fascinating creatures, and the whimsical alternate world brought to life in the pages of author Philip Pullman’s trilogy of books.

“Philip’s books are as deep as they are wide,” executive producer Jane Tranter told Entertainment Weekly. “They exist on many levels and they have a terrific breadth of location stories. That’s very hard for a film to capture.

"In our first season, every episode takes place with Lyra in a different location as she goes on her journey further and further north."

The show will follow the adventures of Lyra Belacqua (Logan star Dafne Keen) as she and her daemon Pantalaimon travel the world and uncover a conspiracy by a shadowy but powerful organization to kidnap children and separate them from their souls. (Daemons are a sort of animal familiar — everyone in Lyra’s world has one.)

Along the way, she encounters a Texan aeronaut named Lee Scoresby (Lin-Manuel Miranda) and a massive armored bear named Iorek Byrnison, who can talk. “Originally the biggest challenge for me on set was working with Iorek, but then I got used to that,” Keen told EW. “Those scenes are quite hard because you’re not talking to anyone. It’s an object you have to look at. It’s weird, it’s strange, but it’s really fun to do.”

At age 14, Keen is still fairly new to the business, but she already has a sophisticated understanding of the tropes too often surrounding female characters, and is mindful of undercutting them. “The most amazing thing about Lyra is that she is a modern heroine,” she said. “In films and shows, it’s usually the sexual power they have. [Lyra’s] power is her personality and her strength and her determination and her braveness. It’s just all her. It has nothing to do with her gender.”

In the books, Lyra is intense, precocious, feisty and very brave. It look like Keen will fill the role nicely.

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Season 1 of His Dark Materials will cover Pullman’s first book, The Northern Lights (or The Golden Compass, depending on where in the world you live). Season 2 — which has already been greenlit by HBO — will cover the second book, The Subtle Knife. A third season, if approved, would cover the final book in the trilogy, The Amber Spyglass.

Along the way, the producers will pull in some extra material from The Book of Dust, Pullman’s His Dark Materials prequel book. That means characters like James McAvoy’s Lord Asriel and Ruth Wilson’s Marisa Coulter will get expanded storylines. “Why was she able to separate from her daemon?” asked Wilson. “How does she do that? What does she really believe in? What does she really want? Philip Pullman has given us license to dig more into her and to examine why she is who she is and why she does the awful things she does.”

Image: His Dark Materials/HBO

With all this added content, His Dark Materials will need a budget to match its ambitions; giant talking bears don’t just animate themselves, after all. That’s where Game of Thrones comes in. Tranter acknowledges that HBO’s hit paved the way for “heavily realized serialized pieces of television,” which is what she wants His Dark Materials to be.

However, she doesn’t want the show to be just like Thrones. “I can say that I am very, very, very glad I’m making His Dark Materials and not an adult, X-rated, male-orientated piece of fantasy,” Tranter said. “Philip Pullman always said His Dark Materials is a series of adult novels that children could and should read. And we tried to place our television adaptation in exactly that place.”

Do I detect a bit of shade thrown at Thrones? I guess if you want to be the best, you’ve got to beat the best.

His Dark Materials premieres on November 4 on HBO.

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