HBO finished the third season of His Dark Materials, a show based on books by Philip Pullman. People might feel like they’ve seen this before if they watched The Golden Compass movie in 2007. Even though they tell the same story, the HBO series and the movie are not exactly the same. HBO’s series is like the latest version, and The Golden Compass is an older one. It’s not a sequel. So, why are people confused if there is no difference between the series and movie?

HBO and The Golden Compass both tell a story, they just have their own unique twists, like different flavors of ice cream. HBO made a TV series called His Dark Materials. It’s about three books – Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. The show did it one book at a time – Season 1 for Northern Lights, Season 2 for The Subtle Knife, and Season 3 for The Amber Spyglass. They went step by step to tell the whole story.

The Golden Compass movie had a substantial budget of $180 million but earned only $372 million at the box office. The financial performance fell short of justifying a sequel. Furthermore, no other movies were made to complete Pullman’s trilogy. The absence of sequels for 12 years added to the confusion among audiences.

HBO’s His Dark Materials series did a better job than The Golden Compass movie in showing Philip Pullman’s books. The movie wanted to be a big hit with lots of action, so it skipped important parts to save money. One more thing it missed was talking about religion, which is an essential part of His Dark Materials. But HBO’s series, with Dafne Keen as Lyra, stayed closer to the books. Especially in Season 1, it followed The Golden Compass more faithfully.

The Golden Compass movie showed us Philip Pullman’s world, but HBO’s His Dark Materials series did even more by covering the whole trilogy in a way that stayed true to the books. The confusion comes from the fact that there were no more movies after The Golden Compass, and then there was a long wait of 12 years before the HBO series came out. The differences between the two adaptations help us understand the story better and see what each one adds to Pullman’s amazing tale.