Jack Thorne has been tasked with adapting Philip Pullman’s epic fantasy trilogy HIS DARK MATERIALS for BBC One. New Line Cinema is producing the event series with Bad Wolf.
Materials follows orphan Lyra who lives in a parallel universe in which science, theology, and magic are entwined. The trilogy is made up of Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. It has been published in over forty languages and sold nearly 17.5 million copies worldwide. The first book in the series was previously adapted into the 2007 feature The Golden Compass which made $370 million worldwide.
Executive producers are Pullman, Jane Tranter, and Julie Gardner for Bad Wolf, Toby Emmerich and Carolyn Blackwood for New Line, Bethan Jones for BBC One, and Deborah Forte for Scholastic. BBC One controller Charlotte Moore and BBC Drama Commissioning controller Polly Hill greenlit the series.
Thorne was previously a writer on Skins, the teen drama that launched the careers of Dev Patel, Nicholas Hoult, and Jack O’Connell. He has won two BAFTA TV award for This Is England ’88 and The Fades, and also co-wrote A Long Way Down with Nick Hornby. He most recently penned the Sky Atlantic’s The Last Panthers, which will premiere on Sundance TV on April 13th. Panthers has already aired in the UK and won Thorne a best drama series BAFTA nomination last week. He was also nominated for This Is England ’90 and Don’t Take My Baby in the same awards event.
He is repped by Casarotto Ramsay and Associates and WME.
Emily J | Staff Writer
