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MUSIC AND ENTERTAINMENT 2: Pullman and the Big Screen Battle

"The Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter" have dominated the past two years at the box office. And when the sequels hit theaters, they will be blockbusters-guaranteed. Given all that, it's no wonder that movie producers are hungry for the rights to big, action-packed, cult fantasy books that come in sets of three or more.

Among the hottest properties picked up in recent years is Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. New Line Cinema, the studio behind LoTR, secured the rights to all three books in February of 2002, and plans to bring them to the big screen with the help of Scholastic Entertainment, which specializes in adapting children's books for TV and film.

Production is clipping along. Famous playwright Tom Stoppard, who also worked on the script for "Shakespeare in Love," completed a rough draft of a screenplay this June. Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) and Sam Mendes (American Beauty) are vying to direct. With a BBC radio adaptation, a stage version at the National in London, and Philip Pullman's Whitbread Award (a literary honor normally reserved for adult books), buzz for the trilogy is high.

Like Rowling and Tolkien, Philip Pullman is a Brit. And like his more well known countrymen, he writes books crammed with thrills, action, heroes and magic. But Pullman is different in that his book is full of big, weird ideas. Big, weird ideas that might cause trouble.

Fundamentalist Christian groups have held burnings of the Harry Potter books because they contain witches. Well, Pullman's books contain witches too--along with daemons, fallen angels, evil priests, ghosts, alternate worlds and a dying God. The book pits its heroes, not just against organized religion, but against something called "The Kingdom of Heaven." How are groups that don't like Harry Potter going to respond to that?

Kids Newsroom phoned Reverend Doug Taylor, head of the Jesus Party in Maine, a prominent anti-Potter demonstrator, to ask if he was planning to speak out against Pullman's trilogy. He'd never heard of it. "We protest Harry Potter because it gets us more attention then any other books on the market," Taylor said. "We are against all portrayals of magic in books intended for children. Paganism and Christianity go together like oil and water."

Taylor was unmoved by descriptions of the possibly Pagan elements in "His Dark Materials." When told that a movie version would be coming out, he took note. Movie versions are good for publicity, he explained, telling us to expect another protest in June when "Prisoner of Azkaban" comes out.

Although the Catholic Church has no quarrel with Harry Potter, it has issued public statements against books in the past. In June, the Catholic Conference of Illinois expressed official concern with anti-Catholic sentiments in the "Left Behind" series of books and movies. Kids Newsroom spoke with Bob Gilligan, executive director of the Conference, who was also not familiar with Pullman's series.

"There's a sort of precedence with Left Behind," said Gilligan, when asked if the Church might publicly condemn heretical children's books. "We would wait to hear from our teachers, if they became concerned with the books' popularity, and then take it to the bishops to see what they think."

--Written by Reina Hardy

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