Sorry for the redundancy. What a surprise. I certainly hope the backers lose all their money. Guardian:

One of the key religious themes of Philip Pullman's award-winning series of children's novels, His Dark Materials, has been watered down to appeal to a wider audience in the new Hollywood film version of the first book. The original story's rejection of organised religion, and in particular of the historic abuse of power in the Catholic Church, has been altered to avoid offending followers of the faith in the UK and in America.

While Pullman himself has said he believes 'the outline of the story is faithful to what I wrote, given my knowledge of what they have done', the National Secular Society - of which the author is an honorary associate - has now spoken out against the changes.

'It was clear right from the start that the makers of this film intended to take out the anti-religious elements of Pullman's book,' said Terry Sanderson, president of the society. 'In doing that they are taking the heart out of it, losing the point of it, castrating it. It seems that religion has now completely conquered America's cultural life and it is much the poorer for it. What a shame that we have to endure such censorship here too.'

But my favorite part of the story is this handy little checklist: Read more…

Here's the trailer.

Release is scheduled for December, in plenty of time for the War on shopping Christmas, which of late has formed such an endearing part of our Holiday season here in the States.

The Christianists are going to hate this one, and they're going to go even more batshit than they usually are.

Why? Here's a profile of the author, Philip Pullman: Read more…