There appears to be a bit of a flurry of media hype over the reports that the director of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, Chris Weitz (American Pie, About A Boy) will be removing reference to God from his films.
Variously, BBC, The Times, and The Guardian are all reporting that New Line have asked Weitz to tone down the anti-religious aspects of the books.
The primary source for all the buzz looks to be an interview done over on the fansite, bridgetothestars.net where Weitz says:
"New Line is a company that makes films for economic returns. You would hardly expect them to be anything else. They have expressed worry about the possibility of HDM’s perceived antireligiosity making it an unviable project financially. My job is to get the film made in such a way that the spirit of the piece is carried through to the screen, and to do that I must contend not only with the difficulties of the material but with the fears of the studio. Needless to say, all my best efforts will be directed towards keeping HDM as liberating and iconoclastic an experience as I can. But there may be some modification of terms. You will probably not hear of the "Church" but you will hear of the Magisterium. Those who will understand will understand. I have no desire to change the nature or intentions of the villains of the piece, but they may appear in more subtle guises."
Fair enough. I'm not going to get my knickers in a twist quite yet.
Update: So it turns out that this Weitz fellow is a pussy, er, I mean has had to pull out of the film because the "technical challenges of making such an epic" were too much for him.
You know who I think they should get? David Schmoeller. Look him up.
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