BBC blows the budget on Dark Materials
Producers begin work on second series before first has aired over fears that its star would look too old
IT IS thought to be the most expensive drama ever shown on the BBC – and one of the corporation’s biggest leaps of faith.
A lavish adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials will air this autumn, the first instalment of a planned trilogy and intended to prove that the corporation can match Netflix or Amazon when it comes to bigbudget entertainment.
Adaptations of Pullman’s stories have a chequered history – a film version starring Nicole Kidman flopped at the box office – but the BBC has taken the rare step of beginning work on the second instalment, at a cost of millions, without knowing if audiences will warm to the first.
The trilogy will star 14-year-old Dafne Keen as heroine Lyra Belacqua, an orphan who embarks on a dangerous journey, joined by James McAvoy, Ruth Wilson and Lin-Manuel Miranda. However, producers feared she would look too old for series two if they waited.
Early indications, however, are that the drama will satisfy fans. The first trailer was unveiled this week at San Diego ComicCon to a rapturous reception.
Piers Wenger, the BBC’s head of drama, said that the decision to commit to at least two series was unusual. “It’s a leap of faith but a leap of faith that we all felt very sure about,” he said. “I think you have to go with your instincts and ours were that we had to back [this piece]. “The first and second seasons are continuous and we have a young actor at the heart of the story who needed to look the same age as in the first series, so that meant we had to commit to do the first two.” His Dark Materials is understood to be costing less than the $7million per episode budget of Netflix’s The Crown, but to exceed anything previously shown on the BBC. The cost is being shared with HBO, the US network that will distribute it internationally.
Wenger said: “By our standards, the budget is huge. There is no doubt about that. But it feels really important for the BBC to be behind producing a quintessentially British author’s work, and an iconic piece of work that really resonates.”
The costs are so high partly because the production involved CGI creation of the “daemons” – animal companions that represent each character’s soul.
A significant portion of the budget was also spent on recreating Pullman’s fantastical worlds in a studio in Cardiff, while other scenes were shot in Oxford.
The stories have a darker tone than Kidman’s 2007 film, The Golden Com
pass, which was aimed at children and watered down some of the books’ more complex elements, in particular Pullman’s negative representation of organised religion. They have been adapted by Jack Thorne, whose credits include the stage production Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
‘It’s a leap of faith but a leap of faith that we all felt very sure about. I think you have to go with your instincts and ours were that we had to back this’