Chris Weitz Talks ‘The Golden Compass’

Chris Weitz has directed New Moon after replacing Catherine Hardwicke as the person charged with bringing the books to life. And by all accounts New Moon is a much-more-faithful adaptation of the book it’s based on than the first film was.

However, while New Moon seems to be pleasing the fans of the books, Weitz is taking some stick from critics who feel the movie doesn’t work as well as Twilight does on the big screen. Basically, Weitz cannot win and had no chance of pleasing everyone.

Weitz’ decision to keep New Moon faithful to the source material may have partly been influenced by the way his direction of The Golden Compass was tempered by changes enforced by studio bosses. Phillip Pullman’s classic book was ruined by execs eager not to upset the Christian right in America.

In a New York Magazine interview about New Moon, Weitz touches on The Golden Compass:

“The Golden Compass became a bad experience because the studio didn’t have faith in the strength of the ideas of the novel, which is ironic because it’s one of the greatest fantasy novels ever written, if not the greatest, and they took the religion out of it and tried to turn it into a popcorn movie. We had an inferior product, which was trying to avoid anything with any religious content in it, which emasculated the film. I think there were some very unwise decisions that led to its financial ruin here, and in turn, to the destruction of New Line as we knew it. This movie [New Moon], I suppose, is redemption for me, because I was able to accurately depict the book on film.”

I feel bad for Weitz now because he took criticism about The Golden Compass when it was released due to the story having been changed far too much. However, it seems he was as big a fan of the source material as anyone and hated the enforced changes as much as the fans did.