HBO has two big series that will be premiering later this Fall. We know that the first will be Watchmen in October. We won’t have to wait too much longer for the second.
His Dark Materials is set to premiere on HBO, Monday, November 4th at 9pm. This puts this series and Watchmen on back to back nights. Monday also has a lot of competition, both comic book related and non-comic book related series, but HBO always seems to be quite confident that they will succeed if they feel like they have a hit on their hands. That’s what this tells me, and it also tells me they have quite the one-two punch coming.
Adapting Philip Pullman’s award-winning trilogy of the same name, which is considered a modern masterpiece of imaginative fiction, the series follows Lyra (Dafne Keen, pictured above), a seemingly ordinary but brave young woman from another world. Her search for a kidnapped friend uncovers a sinister plot involving stolen children and becomes a quest to understand a mysterious phenomenon called Dust.
Other series regulars include: Ruth Wilson (Golden Globe winner for “The Affair”) as Mrs. Coulter, Lin-Manuel Miranda (Tony Award winner for “Hamilton”) as Lee Scoresby, James McAvoy (Golden Globe nominee for “Atonement”) as Lord Asriel, Clarke Peters (HBO’s “The Wire” and “Treme”) as The Master of Jordan College, James Cosmo as Farder Coram and Anne-Marie Duff as Ma Costa, with Will Keen as Father MacPhail and Ariyon Bakare as Lord Boreal.
HIS DARK MATERIALS is produced by Bad Wolf and New Line Cinema for BBC One and HBO. Executive producing the series are: Dan McCulloch, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins and Julie Gardner for Bad Wolf; Philip Pullman, Jack Thorne, Tom Hooper, Otto Bathurst; Deborah Forte, Toby Emmerich and Carolyn Blackwood for New Line Cinema; and Ben Irving and Piers Wenger for BBC One.
Photo Credit: HBO