FLIGHT OF FANTASY: Anna Maxwell Martin plays Lyra Belacqua, who sets out to save the world with a little help from her friends, the armor-clad bears, in Pullman's epic
For an author, adaptation can be the sincerest and most lucrative form of flattery. J.M. Barrie wrote a lousy novelization of his own play,
Peter Pan
, long before Disney's defanged version sent its royalties into orbit; L. Frank Baum was quick to write a musical of his
Wizard of Oz
, but it took Judy Garland and MGM to make his prose really sing; the secret of
Harry Potter's
transfiguration to the screen is that J. K. Rowling's books are screenplays-in-waiting; and in film director Peter Jackson, J.R.R. Tolkien has at long last got the editor he needed. Adaptation can...
