Bloodless Coup

Sort of Like Taking Jesus Out of the Christian Bible

I'd read that they were going to tone down the role of the Church in the film adaptation of The Golden Compass - but they are going to delete it entirely?

Weitz revealed that New Line had, essentially, told him to remove all references to "the Church" from the screenplay. The problem, you see, is that Pullman's book takes place in a sort of parallel universe where the Reformation never happened and the Church exerts enormous power and authority. According to Weitz, the studio feared a perception of "antireligiosity" and therefore asked that he bowdlerize (my word, not his) the material - a request that Weitz seemed happy enough to comply with, noting that the book is generally anti-authoritarian, not necessarily anti-religion.

Hmmm. Clearly the word "heresy" will be in the movie a lot less often than it is in the book. More broadly, have they even read books 2 & 3? It's pretty close to impossible to take the Church out of these books. Strike that - it is impossible to take the Church out of these books. Which makes me wonder what the plot of the movies is going to be.