HisDarkMaterials.org

Buzz Report reports: New York’s Scholastic will release seven formats of books around the release of New Line Cinema's The Golden Compass in December, which the publisher is co-producing. Additional products will include multi-platform video games from Sega, figures from Corgi, collectibles from Master Replicas, trading cards from Inkworks, playsets from Mega Brands and games from Sababa Toys.

"We're reaching all these different ages," says Leslye Schaefer, senior vice president of Scholastic Media, told Playthings. "This property has such a large fan base." The first push of product will debut about six weeks prior to the release of the film, with additional promotions and support throughout the subsequent release of the DVD and, hopefully, ahead of another movie in the series, since Compass is the first book of a trilogy, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials.

Queste Oscure Materie.net writes: [we] realised an interview with one of the technicians who are working on the Golden Compass movie.

Question: What can you tell us about your job? How many technicians are there? What do you do exactly?

Answer: There are other Italian technicians and we work on different subjects. One of them takes care of fx, that is for example the realisation of snow. We will probably have digital snow with a mix of real snow.

An other person takes care of research and development of the 2d department. He creates and assembles applications and modules for the 2d department. He is a huge help to us. My unit is called compositing. We have all the elements (3D elements, matte-paint, green screen, roto, etc.) and we have to take them and assemble them, creating a composition.

Playthings reports: At this year’s Book Expo America (BEA), which took place this past weekend at New York’s Jacob Javits Center, Judith Haut, vice president of communications for Random House, New York, also said that they’ve been getting great response to its properties at this year’s show, especially for The Golden Compass, which will hit theaters this December with plenty of product and publishing in tow from master toy licensee Corgi/Master Replicas, among others.

“New Line is doing a great job promoting Golden Compass,” she says. “We’re also working closely with accounts to put together promotions leading up to the Golden Compass film.” Haut said efforts to promote all the books in the Philip Pullman series will be ongoing both before and after the release of the film, in the hopes of building an even bigger audience for the film sequels.

After many painstaking hours of editing we are proud to present production footage from The Golden Compass.

This material was released by New Line at the Cannes film festival.

Once again a big thanks to Samwise for helping out with the editing of the footage!

View the production footage.

iMedia Connection reports: The release of Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass" may still be far off, but that hasn't tapered the interest of its fans. New Line Cinema has created a beautiful site dedicated to immersing the audience in a fantasy world -- Lyra's parallel universe -- providing intriguing insights to the movie and artful downloads for the fans.

Looking for The Golden Compass reviews?

See our The Golden Compass reviews page, updated constantly with the latest press reviews

JoBlo.com adds a review of the Cannes film festival. The review includes a couple extra photos from the evening celebration at Cannes as well as a listing of comments gathered from the festival.

When venturing back into a fantasy world, New Line followed their instincts to replicate a precedent set by their successful launch of the first THE LORD OF THE RINGS instalment back in 2001. The studio went "all out" with the intention of launching their newest multi million-dollar epic production. Nothing was spared at the Cannes Film Festival in the hopes of creating their next great trilogy.

Watch the video of the interview here.

Newsround reports: The actress playing Lyra in the film of Philip Pullman's Northern Lights, The Golden Compass, has spoken exclusively to Newsround about her role.

Dakota Blue Richards beat thousands of other hopefuls to the part after hearing about the role on Newsround.

The 13-year-old said she's similar to Lyra because she's quite brave and doesn't like being told what to do!

"I like to do what I'm told not to do, just because someone's told me not to do it," she said.

Ottowa Citizen writes: Sam Elliott turns up in the most unexpected places. There he is, for instance, in the middle of the children's fantasy movie The Golden Compass, a story that takes place in a parallel world of witches and magical beasts and people's inner creatures that walk beside them and shift shape.

Yesterday evening saw New Line celebrating not only the true start of their promotional efforts for The Golden Compass, but also their 40^th birthday.

The event was held at the lovely Villa Rothschild near Cannes, and featured amonst other things a huge statue of Iorek, a bar carved of ice with ice statues of Ragnar, a chocolate fountain, and a photo corner where visitors got the chance to be edited into the movie poster.

We received new promo stills at the press conference in Cannes. Apart from stills from movie footage they also include shots of the crew working on set.

They've all been added to our image gallery for your enjoyment.

Worthplaying.com also posted three more screenshots of Sega's upcoming The Golden Compass videogame.

Check them out in our image gallery.

Accesshollywood.com have posted a great video with a lot of behind the scenes footage on their website. It contains a lot of dialogue and scenes that were not seen in the teaser trailer and interestingly a few other takes of scenes that we've seen in the press screening in Cannes.

Most notably is the scene where Lyra escapes from Mrs. Coulter's apartment by climbing out of the window. The expression on Mrs. Coulter face was quite different, and in my opinion much more convincing, in the footage we've seen at the press screening than it is in this footage.

Nonetheless, it's a very interesting thing to see, and it does have similarities with the press screening, except for the fact that the CGI is missing.

Watch the behind-the-scenes footage

The Guardian writes: The Golden Compass, the Hollywood adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, launched in Cannes yesterday with a sneak preview of the film, which will hit UK cinemas at Christmas.

Chris Weitz, its screenwriter and director, used the event to address speculation about whether the books' firmly anti-religious message would be retained.

Referring to the Magisterium - the all-powerful religious body that wields total political power in the world of Lyra, the heroine - he said: "In the books the Magisterium is a version of the Catholic church gone wildly astray from its roots. If that's what you want in the film, you'll be disappointed. We have expanded the range of meanings that the Magisterium represents."

The press conference that New Line held on Monday was without a doubt their most important event in Cannes. Reporters from around the globe were present, from every type of media. This immediately proved New Line's global ambitions for The Golden Compass. This also meant that a lot of the press wasn't familiar with the source material, so we prepared ourselves for some very standard questions.

The perfect example was when a reporter asked Chris Weitz about the dæmons. He replied "have you read the books?" "No" she answered. "You should" Weitz responded, and that was the end of the matter.

The International Herald Tribune writes: Move over, Gandalf and Frodo. After "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, New Line Cinema is betting that armored polar bears and flying witches will be the next big thing.

Reporters at the Cannes Film Festival watched a preview of 10 vivid minutes of footage from "The Golden Compass," a US$180 million (€133 million) digital fantasy to be released worldwide on Dec. 7. The studio used the same sneak peek strategy at Cannes with the first "Lord of the Rings" installment in 2001.

We attended the photo call for The Golden Compass today, with Robert Shaye, Michael Lynne, Deborah Forte, Bill Carraro, Andrew Miano, Chris Weitz, Dakota Blue Richards, Sam Elliot, Eva Green, and Daniel Craig participating.

View our photos.

If you wish to reproduce any of these images, please request permission first.