James McAvoy Joins the Cast of BBC One's HIS DARK MATERIALS

According to Entertainment Weekly, James McAvoy has officially joined the cast of BBC One's His Dark Materials TV series.

The X-Men: Dark Phoenix star will take the role of Lord Asriel, a character portrayed by Daniel Craig in 2007's The Golden Compass. Asriel is the ruthless adventurer father of Lyra (Keen), an orphan girl who lives in a parallel universe to ours - one where the souls of humans exist outside their bodies as talking animal companions.

BBC One and Bad Wolf, which is producing the series with New Line Cinema, declined to comment on the casting.

The eight-part His Dark Materials is based on the book trilogy by author Philip Pullman, who is also involved in the series' development. What began with The Golden Compass continued with The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. The story follows Lyra as she seeks to track down a missing friend, though the mission leads her to discover a sinister plot involving kidnapped children. Her journey becomes even more expansive when she learns of parallel universes and the mysterious substance known as Dust.

Tom Hooper (The King's Speech) will direct the series, which also stars Lin-Manuel Miranda as adventurer Lee Scoresby, as Deadline previously reported.

McAvoy made his acting debut as a teen in The Near Room (1995) and made mostly television appearances until 2003, when his feature film career began. His notable television work includes the thriller State of Play and the Science fiction mini-series Frank Herbert's Children of Dune. Besides screen acting, McAvoy has performed in several West End productions and received three nominations for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor. He has also done voice work for animated filmsincluding Gnomeo & Juliet, its sequel, SHERLOCK Gnomes, and Arthur Christmas.

In 2003, McAvoy appeared in a lead role in Bollywood Queen. This was followed by a supporting role, the faun Mr. Tumnus, in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005). His performance in Kevin Macdonald's drama The Last King of Scotland (2006) garnered him several award nominations. The critically acclaimed romantic drama war film Atonement (2007) earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination and his second BAFTA nomination. He appeared as a newly trained assassin in the action thriller Wanted (2008). Since 2011, he has played the young Professor Charles Xavier in the superhero film X-Men: First Class (2011), a role he reprised in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), Deadpool 2 (2018) and X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019). McAvoy starred in the crime comedy-drama film Filth (2013) for which he won Best Actor in the British Independent Film Awards. In 2017, he portrayed Kevin, a man with 23 personalities, in M. Night Shyamalan's Split, for which he received critical acclaim.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride

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