The massive voice cast for HBO & BBC’s upcoming adaptation of His Dark Materials has been announced. While the series will boast an all-star cast of in-the-flesh actors, their animal counterparts, or daemon’s, will have roles all their own.
Helen McCrory (Harry Potter) will voice Stelmaria, Lord Asriel’s snow leopard daemon. David Suchet (Poirot) is Kaisa, gyrfalcon daemon to the witch Serafina Pekkala. Aeronaut Lee Scoresby’s daemon is an arctic hare called Hester, voiced by Cristela Alonzo and Lyra Belacqua’s unsettled daemon, Pantalaimon, is voiced by Kit Connor (Rocketman). Mrs. Coulter’s mysterious daemon, a Golden Monkey, doesn’t speak or have a name but his animal noises and vocal characteristics will be created by Brian Fisher (Detective Pikachu), who also serves as the lead puppeteer and CFX Coordinator on the series. Finally, Iorek Byrnison, a bear who Lyra meets on her quest will be voiced by Joe Tandberg (The Innocents).
To help the actors form relationships with their daemon counterparts, puppets were used on set before being created in CGI by Framestore.
The voice cast will join the previously announced Dafne Keen (Logan) as Lyra, Lin Manuel-Miranda (Mary Poppins Returns) as Lee Scoresby, McAvoy as Lyra’s uncle, Lord Asriel and Clarke Peters (The Wire) playing The Master who trains Lyra. Ian Gelder (Queers) will be portraying Librarian Scholar Charles, Ruth Wilson (The Affair) as the glamorous Mrs. Coulter, Will Keen (Wolf Hall) as Father MacPhail, Ariyon Bakare (Life) as Lord Boreal, and Georgina Campbell (Black Mirror) as journalist Adele Starminster.
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The series was ordered by BBC One and was written by Jack Thorne (National Treasure) back in 2015. The book series consists of Northern Lights, which became the 2007 film The Golden Compass with Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. The stories are about the coming of age of two children, Lyra and Will, who move through parallel universes.
His Dark Materials will be executive produced by Hooper, Pullman, Tranter, Gardner, Dan McCulloch, Deborah Forte, Toby Emmerich and Caroline Blackwood for New Line, and Ben Irving and Piers Wenger for BBC One.
