The His Dark Materials books are some of the best young adult novels out there, with an incredibly original premise, and deeper-then-you-think religious allegory, and a powerful and moving plotline. Yet, as every other YA book series got made into movies no matter how well they did The Golden Compass came to a halting stop after the first film underperformed. Thankfully, the British and HBO are here to help us as they’re bringing us His Dark Materials as a new 8-part series adaptation of the trilogy.
We don’t know all that much about how the adaptation is going to work aside from the fact that it’s eight episodes long (with a second season already ordered), and this trailer doesn’t really tell us much more. There’s definitely plenty of shadowy shots and odd things going on but on the whole this is more a teaser to brag about the cast, which includes Logan‘s Daphne Keen, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ruth Wilson, and James McAvoy. If you haven’t read the books you’d have no idea what this was about, that humans have special animals attached to them called daemons, or that at some point a polar bear wears armor and fights a war. It does look visually striking, though.
BBC has not announced an air date other than saying it will come this year. It’s likely that the show will debut in the UK and then come over to HBO when it hits the states.
