The controversy about the author's atheism aside, isn't the reason The Golden Compass is likely to bomb is that it has too convoluted a plot to appeal to anyone other than the actual readers of the books? Say what you will about "theistic" stories like the Narnia Chronicles or The Lord of the Rings, or, for that matter, the Harry Potter series, those plots were relatively straight-forward battles between obvious good (ie., kids, dwarves and other little people) and absolute evil (Lord Sauron, Voldemort, Tilda Swinton) that translate well to the rigid formulas of cinematic entertainment. Can you imagine an uninitiated adult trying to figure out what "dust" is or what the significance of "daemons" are?

This looks like it might be another Dune trainwreck....