A Twilight Kiss

While watching the Chris Weitz directed film, The Golden Compass, the film that persuaded Summit Entertainment to offer the New Moon director’s chair to the American Pie director, I noted a very disturbing fact – the film shows “the lack of storytelling abilities and emotional heartbeat — which can make a visually stunning film totally ineffective in its ability to affect its audiences.”

That is why when Chris Weitz revealed during the 2009 Comic Con in San Diego that the studio interfered with the editing of The Golden Compass, I heaved a sigh of relief. In his Box Office interview, the New Moon director divulged that The Golden Compass remains to be a dream project.

Which other book would you love to film?

To be honest, I would love to film The Golden Compass. I would love to have been allowed to do my own cut of The Golden Compass because I did film that book and there could be a real version of it, but it would cost millions of dollars to complete with the special effects. The cut was taken away from me and that was a devastating experience.

That’s the other book that I would like to film. I wouldn’t have the strength to go through another three years to do it, but it is a great shame that the fear of the ideas in the book led the studio to do a version which I think caused its own downfall.

It’s almost a safety net, having that many people know the book already very well, more than American audiences knew The Golden Compass.

Yes, American audiences weren’t that familiar with The Golden Compass. Once you start monkeying around with the plot and characters and key concepts in the film, you really lose what made the book appeal to anyone in the first place.

If you take the example of The Lord of the Rings, it wasn’t that it made everybody into a geek overnight. People were able to see what had been great about it in the first place, and the adherence to story and character really paid off, even though a lot of people went to see it who hadn’t read Lord of the Rings in the first place and didn’t know anything else.

Thanks to Spunk Ransom for the Box Office link.

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