New Scriptwriter For The Subtle Knife

Variety sez: Hossein Amini has been hired by New Line to write The Subtle Knife, their second big-budget adaptation from the His Dark Materials series. As several scenes from the book appear to have been incorporated into the film of The Golden Compass, his job might just be a little more difficult than it needs to be - though he might want to dip into The Amber Spyglass a little and just rig the deck against the third film's author in revenge.

The film is far from being greenlit, of course - New Line have some strict performance criteria in place against which The Golden Compass' box office will be measured. Sadly, I doubt they have such stringent standards set for the filmmaking to live up to.

Amini is no stranger to the city of Oxford (fiction), having also written Michael Winterbottom's Jude and, I believe, attending university here. I think, technically, those might be considered minor qualifications.