New Line Cinema, the studio behind The Lord of the Rings trilogy, has greenlit production of The Golden Compass, a $150 million fantasy film based on the first book in Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.  Chris Weitz (American Pie, About a Boy), who wrote the screenplay and was originally set to direct the film, stepped down as director last year only to return to helm the project after British director Anand Tucker quit the project.  If the first film in the projected trilogy is a success, New Line plans to film the second and third installments at the same time (as it did all 3 LOTR films).

The success of the Lord of the Rings movies and the first of Disney's Chronicles of Narnia films has made fantasy a very hot genre in Hollywood and has obviously played a major role in getting The Golden Compass project off the ground.  However, in comparison to Narnia with its Christian parallels and allusions, the His Dark Materials novels reflect a very different philosophical bent.  Phillip Pullman is obviously very leery of organized religion, and although Weitz has supposedly deleted references to the evil all-powerful church of the novels in his screenplay, replacing it with 'an arbitrary establishment,' the anti-organized religion theme of the His Dark Materials trilogy may well draw fire.  The same Christian fundamentalist groups that helped make the Chronicles of Narnia a hit could be arrayed against The Golden Compass. 

A controversy over the original His Dark Materials books could be bad news for New Line, but it could also be boon to retailers as readers flock to stores to find out what the fuss is all about -- and get hooked on a very powerful fantasy saga in the process.