The movie that bankrupted New Line Cinema
Thanks to the one-two punch of The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter at the turn of the millennium, literary fantasy immediately became Hollywood’s latest obsession, even if almost all of them ended up falling flat on their faces, many of which managed to do so after just one movie.
Whereas The Twilight Saga, The Hunger Games, and to a lesser extent The Maze Runner indicated that it was a lucrative avenue worth exploring if handled correctly, the misses drastically outweighed the hits. Vampire Academy, Mortal Engines, The Giver, Eragon, Inkheart, City of Ember, I Am Number Four, Artemis Fowl, Chaos Walking, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, and The Host are just a small few of the high-profile failures, but only one of them bombed so spectacularly it served as the downfall for an entire studio.
Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy had sold millions of copies, cultivated a huge readership, and won plenty of awards, not least of all for the way the author intertwined a sprawling and fantastical narrative with his typically subversive digs at social, economic, cultural, and religious bodies.
Deciding that it wanted all of the success with none of the controversy, New Line Cinema acquired the rights to the trio of books, funnelled $180million into the production budget of The Golden Compass, recruited an all-star ensemble cast, and then opted to sand down its edges completely.
Funnily enough, watering down the key thematic elements of such widely-praised source material wasn’t greeted with any sort of tangible enthusiasm, and while The Golden Compass did go on to win an Academy Award for ‘Best Visual Effects’, failing to earn enough money at the box office to justify one sequel never mind two was the least of its problems.
Since initially being founded in 1967, New Line Cinema had been involved in some of the most recognisable franchises and popular films of the intervening decades, a run of form that included The Lord of the Rings, Austin Powers, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Blade, Rush Hour, Final Destination, The Mask, and two instalments in the Rocky saga.
In February 2008 – just two months after The Golden Compass had arrived in cinemas – it was revealed that New Line Cinema would be shut down as an independent production unit and absorbed into Warner Bros., with the decision to pre-sell the international rights to the failed blockbuster and the subsequent losses incurred deemed among the final straws.
450 of the company’s 600 full-time staff were laid off from their jobs, and coupled with The Golden Compass‘ complete inability to turn a profit, it served as the instigator for the demise of the once-mighty outfit. In aiming to replicate the success of The Lord of the Rings, New Line instead effectively signed its own death warrant.
