It's November 2006, and on a London soundstage, Dakota Blue Richards is shooting a scene no one will see. Too bad, because for Golden Compass fans, it's the book's most memorable sequence — the shocking cliff-hanger. But the decision to scrap today's work is still months away, so for the moment the mood is light as Richards twirls in the fake snow, demonstrating her reaction when she learned she won the role of Lyra. ''My parents read me the books when I was 9 and I fell in love with them,'' says Richards, now 13. ''I really didn't notice the religious themes back then. But when I read them again before we started filming, I was like, 'Oh, yeah! There they are!'''
For Pullman, they were there all along. In 1993, he was a teacher and modestly successful British children's-book writer who was pushing 50 and felt the time had come to swing for the epic fences. His inspiration was Paradise Lost, John Milton's sympathy-for-the-devil poem about the biblical fall of man and rogue angels waging war against heaven. Pullman first read the classic as a teenager, and today he can vividly recall being ''physically moved by the poetry: My hair bristled, my heart beat faster, my blood went through my body more quickly.''
As he began to write, Pullman realized his yarn was becoming an arena in which to explore Big Questions that had long haunted him. Does God exist? If so, why doesn't the bugger show Himself? If not,what right do religious institutions have to dictate how to live, think, love, and feel? ''I am preoccupied by those questions,'' says the author, 61, who was raised in the Church of England but found himself ''moving away from belief in God'' as a teenager. ''I found I was able with the help of the story to explore these ideas for myself.'' His conclusions? ''At the moment, I cannot see any evidence for God. It might be that if I were standing in a different place, I would see God, and I would know how to react to Him, Her, or it. At the moment, I can't.''
Okay, so the guy doesn't believe in a higher being. But the effect on his work has been complicated. Pullman's fictional universe is marked by supernatural phenomena and ultimately leaves room for the possibility of a creator God — ''something that no atheist would ever really allow,'' notes Craig. And Pullman himself bristles at the charge that his books have an atheistic agenda. ''I don't think they promote anything — except the good qualities of kindness, courage, curiosity, open-mindedness.''
The Materials trilogy was an outright literary sensation in Britain, inspiring stage and radio adaptations. The third novel, 2000's The Amber Spyglass, won the country's prestigious Whitbread Prize, unprecedented for a children's book. The novels hit the kid-lit charts in the U.S., too. They never made a huge mainstream splash, but (alongside Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket) they're credited with broadening the reach of young-adult fantasy fiction. Naturally, Hollywood wanted to make a movie.
NEXT PAGE: ''It's a very expensive undertaking, and you want as wide an audience as possible.... In a way, one wishes that was why people went to movies, to get ideas. But they really go to be entertained.''
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