But hope is alive for fans of Philip Pullman's controversial series. Variety reports that 'Compass' is on its way to becoming the first film to make less than $100 million in North America, only to rake in $300 million abroad.

The film also won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, further increasing its profile.

So will the sequels get made? Producer Deborah Forte, referring to the next two books in the series, says yes: "I will make 'The Subtle Knife' and 'The Amber Spyglass'...I believe there are enough people who see what a viable and successful franchise we have."

Kevin Powers of FirstShowing.net believes that the fault was not in the marketing, as Forte suggests, but in the film itself, which he feels was a watered down version of the original text. The producer says it wasn't marketed strongly enough in the States as a "family film," but Powers thinks that by taking out the references to the church (according to many news reports, Pullman's three novels explicitly mention "God" and "the bible" in a not altogether positive manner), the filmmakers diluted the material too much and took out the heart of the book. For obvious reasons, New Line seemed to want to avoid controversy by doing so, and maybe that's what hurt them at the domestic box office. The 'Harry Potter' films are extremely faithful to the originals. Of course, Rowling's books are also infinitely more popular than Pullman's.

Is it possible that people knew about 'Compass' but just didn't want to see it? Every kid I know was very much aware that the film was out there. Thing 1 pointed out more than once that "polar bears wearing armor are cool." He saw the commercial on television, posters all over town, and ads for the video game in the comic books he reads. But he expressed no great desire to see it in theaters, or to read the novels. He has, however, seen every 'Potter' film so far and read 5 of the 7 books. That's not a comment on 'Dark Materials,' only on the notion that marketing somehow trumps content.

I think it must be hard for a producer to see one of her films that cost $180 million to make bring in less than $100 million in ticket sales in its home country, but that pain has to be dulled quite a bit by an extra $300 million overseas (even though New Line apparently made a bad business deal and won't see most of that money.) But saying that there's an audience out there for two more movies, as long as the marketing is handled differently, is a bit of a stretch.