Eva Green looks smashing, if not slightly more ordinary than usual, in the January 2008 issue of UK Vogue. Undoubtedly, this photo shoot is part of the promotional jamboree for next Friday’s opening of The Golden Compass. The film itself has generated an undue amount of religious contention, for director Chris Weitz claims to have “cut controversial religious content to make the film more commercially viable, with the plan of being more faithful to the original material in sequels.” Obviously, the mainstream-oriented edits are a vain attempt for The Golden Compass to make a profit and actually merit the planned follow-up installments.

And they should be worried. The amount of money invested on this film is rather incomprehensible. Chris Weitz has confirmed the project has swallowed up a $250 million production budget, which exceeded its original budget of $220 million. Reportedly, post-production costs were the major kicker, which of course means that visual effects and CGI are, at best, excessive. In addition, an estimated $120 - $150 million has been splashed out for prints and advertising to promote the film. Altogether, The Golden Compass looks to be the 3rd most expensive film ever made. It’s also the costliest film ever churned out by New Line Cinemas.

The cold truth about these kinds of budgets is that it’s next to impossible to make the money back theatrically with them. There’s a lot of math that goes into this, but the general concept to remember is that the studio has to make about double the budget plus the prints and advertising to break even because movie theaters get their cut. That’s beside stars or creators who get back end deals and the like. This means it’s quite likely that The Golden Compass will need to make 700 million dollars or so worldwide just to break even. That’s a steep hill to climb before you even look at what happened the last time Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig were in a movie together.

Yes, considerably. Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig didn’t set a very convincing precedent with The Invasion. Neither Kidman nor Craig consistently open films very well if you look at the entirety of their careers. Notwithstanding the tastiness of Daniel Craig and the success of Casino Royale, this movie could very well lose a shitload of money.

Unfortunately, I have been informed by a nameless third party that I’ll be seeing this film on opening day. However, even the prospect of Eva Green cannot make me look forward to The Golden Compass because Eva’s witchy character probably won’t see much on-screen time. Sigh. Computer generated armored polar bears just don’t do it for me.

Images from evagreenweb.com