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Originally Posted by Mister Underhill
In this case, Pullman's right -- authors rarely have much creative input beyond token gestures. There are a few big dogs who attempt to negotiate more creative control, but even with a contract things don't always work out -- just look at the whole Clive Cussler debacle of recent years. On the other hand, I heard that J.K. Rowling was able to exercise considerable control over the later Potter films. Funny, if Tolkien had survived and held on to his rights, I'll bet he could have cut a very strong deal for the films. I wonder what that might have looked like.
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It seems many (most?) novelists write with a movie adaptation of the work in mind, & hope the film rights will be sold as a matter of course. Pullman himself in a recent interview about the movie for Empire magazine said he had always had Nicole Kidman in mind as Mrs Coulter. Pullman has had other novels of his adapted for TV - the BBC have done a couple - so I'm assuming that he has an adaptation in mind from the start, in which case he obviously wouldn't have a problem with his works being 'adapted' for the screen.
Tolkien, I assume, never wrote with any thought of a movie in mind - an author like Pullman can include the most fantastical elements/creatures/settings in his work & know that they can be put on screen. Tolkien was writing in a period when a work like LotR could not have made it to the screen (not as live action) in a convincing way. This alone says to me that Tolkien was writing LotR with no thought of a movie adaptation entering his head. Hence, Pullman is writing a book which he hopes to see adapted & which he knows cannot (particularly the religious/anti-religious elements) be turned into a movie without major changes.
What's interesting to me about Pullman's approach here is that in numerous interviews he's stated that he's 'using fantasy to undermine fantasy' that he 'wishes he could write contemporary novels', etc. & implies that the 'fantastical' elements are secondary to the underlying philosophy & the 'deep questions'. However, he seems in this interview to be perfectly happy for that 'underlying philosophy' & those 'deep questions' to be ignored & replaced by a two hour sfx fest. The death of God won't make it to the screen but the armoured polar bears will.
This last point is central to me. Pullman attacks Tolkien for not asking the 'deep questions' but he himself will happily see the 'deep questions' he asks, & the philosophy he espouses, cast away or turned into its opposite. Chris Weitz, in the same Empire feature has stated that the movie will still attack 'totalitarianism', etc, etc. But what we have, in the end, is a writer who claims the intellectual high ground but is happy to see the 'intellectual' dimension of his work twisted beyond recognition in order to have Nicole Kidman playing Mrs Coulter on screen.