The Golden Compass

Bond producers worried about Daniel Craig's Golden Compass shoot

The producers of the James Bond movies were a bit worried when their star travelled to the Arctic Circle to film scenes for The Golden Compass. They weren't worried that their Bond would skid on the ice or anything, they felt a bit uneased by the fact that the crew was shooting The Golden Compass in an area where there were plenty of polar bears. "I guess they were a little concerned that having discovered their new James Bond in Daniel, we then headed to the Arctic Circle where the polar bears were a constant and deadly threat to the crew," Chris Weitz, director of The Golden Compass, told The Daily Express. But Craig himself didn't really care about the threats. "As a massive fan and avid reader of all of Philip Pullman's novels, I was happy to go through the usual hardships," he said. I'm not sure how polar bears figure in as being usual hardships, but when you're James Bond, I guess your usual hardships are a bit different from those of regular folks.

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Cast talks some more Golden Compass

A bit more on the Golden Compass movie, as the Calgary Sun posted a pretty comprehensive report of the press conference that the stars and director of the movie gave to promote it in Cannes. And what they had to say will sound pretty reassuring to fans of the books. Take this quote from director Chris Weitz, for instance: "I think they [movie lovers] should be tired of seeing special effects put in place of story and in place of character. "Almost anything can be done in terms of manipulating visual images and making talking animals and exploding things. But I think there will be a backlash against that sort of thing because, eventually, what it comes down to is wanting to be told a story by the fire. The effects must all be done in service of that." Daniel Craig had this to add, when asked what his goal was in shooting this movie: "Keeping the reality as much as possible and telling the story." He did admit that the large amount of special effects work in the movie was quite daunting for him, especially when it came to the scenes where he acted with his daemon (an animal representing a person's soul). "Literally," he told the assorted press, "you're sort of acting against a green blob. A problem Eva Green didn't have. "My daemon, I think, is not going to appear, so I'm not talking to any weird creatures. So it was like a normal movie to me, apart from the fact that I was suspended on wires and flying."

Sam Elliott talks Golden Compass

Sam Elliott is happy to be in the movie version of The Golden Compass, in which he plays a balloonist flying all over the world, named Lee Scoresby. "Luck of the draw," he told Canadian newspaper Ottawa Citizen. "It just came my way, and I was lucky that it did." According to the interview, Elliott was reluctant to accept the role at first, because it was more or less a variation on the cowboy persona that he has played all throughout his life. "There's not a lot of guys around, apparently, to play these cowboys because I seem to do a lot of them." Then the director of the movie, Chris Weitz, wrote him a note. "I couldn't not do it after he wrote this note. He talked about me and my parallels to this character Scoresby. He was very generous in the way he put it, referring to me as an iconic - which is always kind of a daunting phrase - laconic, classic American cowboy. I used to kind of think, 'God, all I do is westerns.' But I've gotten over that, I've grown up and now I'm just thankful that I had this career rather than wishing I had opportunities to do a few things outside the Western box, more than I have. Because I enjoy that."

Screenwriter hired for His Dark Materials 2

Even though New Line is still in the midst of production on their blockbuster epic The Golden Compass, and even though a studio executive has mentioned that no decisions about a sequel will be made until the first movie has been released, the studio has still decided to go out and hire a screenwriter to already pen a script for the adaptation of the second book in the series, The Subtle Knife. The writer in question will be Hossein Amini, whose previous credits include Wings of the Dove and Drive. This shows the studio has a lot of confidence in their new movie, and judging from the pics released today, you cannot blame them!

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Even though New Line is still in the midst of production on their blockbuster epic The Golden Compass, and even though a studio executive has mentioned that no decisions about a sequel will be made until the first movie has been released, the studio has still decided to go out and hire a screenwriter to already pen a script for the adaptation of the second book in the series, The Subtle Knife. The writer in question will be Hossein Amini, whose previous credits include Wings of the Dove and Drive. This shows the studio has a lot of confidence in their new movie, and judging from the pics released today, you cannot blame them!

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Studio confident about Golden Compass movie

The Chief Operating Officer of Time Warner, Jeff Bewkes, has spoken out on the movies his studios (Warner, New Line) are releasing next year, and he expressed confidence in The Golden Compass. "It won't be another Lord of the Rings," he said, "but it could be a nice solid thing. And if it is, we have three of them." I'm not sure if the comparison with Lord of the Rings was really necessary, since the books are hard to compare in my opinion, but at least it's a good thing that the head of the studio responsible for making the money has confidence that it will be a success. Although it does sting a little bit to see that Bewkes is minimalizing these wonderful books to nothing more than money machines.

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3 more for The Golden Compass

Three more actors have been named to join the cast of The Golden Compass (or, if you want to take the original UK title: The Northern Lights), the first movie in the His Dark Materials trilogy. These three names have not been officially confirmed yet, but were named by actress Eva Green in a recent interview. They are Eric Bana, John Hurt and Kevin Bacon, people that would surely only make this movie stronger than it's already looking.