7. The Golden Compass
Taking place in an alternate universe where people's souls exist as sentient creatures called daemons, "The Golden Compass" follows a young girl named Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon as they search for her missing friend and her uncle Lord Asriel, who was experimenting with a mysterious substance called "Dust." She must also face off against Ms. Coulter, who leads a mysterious group known as the Gobblers who have been kidnapping children from around the world. The book was the first in a trilogy that expanded its adventures to our world as well. The movie featured an excellent cast that included Nicole Kidman, Sam Elliot and Daniel Craig. However, although the special effects of the movie were top notch, the movie itself failed to live up to the book's popularity. The simple fact is that the book had too much going on to be effectively shown in a movie. As a result, the movie's story was crammed way too tight for its barely two hour running time. Combine that with some changes made to the movie's story, and you get a film that lacked the emotional appeal that made the book such a great read. The sad part about all this: the movie ended on a cliffhanger because it was expected that its sequel "The Subtle Knife" would be made into a movie. Six years later, and there still doesn't seem to be any hope of it getting made.