Samantha Ling

The problem for me is that the books go steadily downhill from the first one. Subtle Knife is okay, but it's no Golden Compass. And Amber Spyglass is just a mess. Combine that with the normal trailoff through two movie sequels, and the fact that this one doesn't look like it's making enough money to justify the enormous budget, and I don't think things look good for turning this into another big LotR style movie trilogy.

But I could be wrong. There was that one time... :-)