Fantasy blockbuster nears release

By Mike Collett-White

CANNES, France (Reuters) - First came Harry Potter, then The Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia.

Now young audiences have "The Golden Compass" to look forward to, a big budget adaptation of the first of British author Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy which is likely to be followed by two more.

U.S. film maker Chris Weitz is directing the $180 million (91.4 million pound) picture, based on "The Golden Compass" (known as "Northern Lights" in Britain), which stars Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and Derek Jacobi among others.

"The Golden Compass" tells the story of precocious 12-year-old Lyra Belacqua who embarks on a quest to save her friend, encountering on the way parallel worlds and the wilds of the icy north as well as adult duplicity, repression and evil.

British schoolgirl Dakota Blue Richards was chosen from some 10,000 girls who turned up to audition for the part of Lyra.

Darker than J.K. Rowling's hugely successful Harry Potter books, studio New Line Cinema will be hoping that adults will also pour into cinemas in December, when the film opens.

Although the movie is not yet finished, its makers and some of the stars were at the Cannes Film Festival to promote "The Golden Compass" and show off a 10-minute reel of highlights in a publicity ploy popular with Hollywood studios.

The clips suggest the film will be an action-packed adventure featuring computer-generated animal "daemons" accompanying the characters, talking polar bears, the cavernous dining halls of Oxford University and a stunning-looking Kidman.