Hundreds of aspiring actors attended a casting call today for a chance to appear in upcoming film and TV productions in Oxford.

Queues stretched across Bonn Square from the doors of the New Road Baptist Church where the sessions were held, with one such production rumoured to be the new eight-part TV adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

The series will start production in Wales but some scenes will be shot in Oxford next month. James McAvoy has been cast to play Lord Asriel while Logan star Dafne Keen is cast as Lyra.

Production company Bad Wolf notified the county council that they will be filming in New College Lane from July 2 to July 4.

Aspiring Oxford actor, Joe Cherry, 26, said he turned up in the hopes of gaining some experience in front of the camera.

He said: “I’d be happy to appear in anything.

“At the moment it’s a hobby but I want to try and take it to the next level. I’ve always been interested in acting – my dream is to become an actor and so I thought I’d come along and see what it’s all about.”

Friends from Oxford Leonie Rudloff, 22, and Charlotte Knapp, 20, had also come to sign up as extras in the hopes of progressing their acting careers.

Ms Rudloff said: “I signed up when I was living in London and have done a few things with them before.”

Ms Knapp added: “I’ve done stage stuff before but I’d like to move onto something bigger.”

Arima Velez had travelled from Maidenhead and said: “I’m going to start studying performing arts at university and I thought this could give me some good experience.”

Uni-versalExtras have provided supporting artists for numerous big screen projects including Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Justice League, Kingsman: The Golden Circle and Paddington 2.

After successfully signing up as an extra with the company today, 19-year-old Dalton Ansell from Banbury said: “I think it’s a great opportunity to get into acting but I’m going to do performing arts at college too.”

Uni-versalExtras events co-ordinator Amy Leyshon said the firm often put calls out in areas where filming was expecting to take place and that the calls were not for any one production in particular.

She said: “We had about 1,000 people say they were coming along on social media and we expect a few more to come down too.

“We’ve already contacted the people we have on the books in this area and put the call out to get more on the books ready for the productions.”