Tbh the controversy surrounding the Golden Compass movie is what killed it, not the movie itself. The movie was fine; not amazing but it was good. The problem was that at the time that the GC movie came out, there were many prominent religious groups going around banning books about magic (like Harry Potter) and witches/wizards and anything that looked a bit hinky religion-wise. Pullman, a professed atheist, ticked all of those boxes. You have souls expressed as animals, witches who use magic and a very God-like Authority figure that the characters are at odds with. It was the perfect book for those kind of groups to get riled up about and it definitely effected Golden Compass's box numbers and the production of the sequels.