Neil Gaiman downplays American Gods problems, hypes Good Omens (UPDATE: Trailer)

In today’s TV landscape, where everyone wants to make the next Game of Thrones-sized hit, the works of fantasy author Neil Gaiman are a hot commodity. Starz is currently in production on the second season of a show based on his novel American Gods, Amazon is making a six-part adaptation of Good Omens, the apocalyptic comedy he cowrote with Terry Pratchett, another titan of the genre…Amazon, which is pouring huge amounts of money into a Lord of the Rings series, even signed an exclusive deal with Gaiman that gives the company first refusal for any TV ideas he might have. Gaiman is very popular these days.

But that doesn’t mean that everything is going smoothly for him. American Gods season 2 has been plagued by rumors of problems on set: showrunner Jesse Alexander has been sidelined, script rewrites have delayed shoots, actors are rewriting their lines, budgets are fluctuating…and that’s all after original Michael Green and Bryan Fuller were replaced. It sounds like a bit of a mess.

Speaking to Deadline ahead of his appearance at New York Comic Con, Gaiman cautioned fans not to believe everything they hear. “When I see stuff online with people going ‘oh Season 2 is in trouble’ or ‘Season 2 isn’t happening’ or ‘Season 2 is doomed,’ It’s like I’ve seen the stuff. It looks great to me, which is a lovely kind of place to be,” he said.

"Look, the process of writing and getting stuff written, and getting a TV show made with a lot of writers is always a process. If you have a writer’s room sometimes the script is not going to work with one writer and it’s going to move to another writer, things like that, and I’m very aware that stuff like that has happened. Otherwise, as far as I can tell it’s, at least in terms of what ends up in my email and occasional phone calls, it’s all happening fairly amicably. Those are the kind of conversations that I have so if there is grumpiness I’m kind of missing it all, which is fine because I’m over here in post-production with my own set of headaches each morning."

Essentially, Gaiman is saying this is all part of how the sausage gets made. Enjoy the sausage.

Gaiman’s other set of headaches come courtesy of Amazon’s Good Omens, where he’s serving as showrunner. (Starz executives have said that Gaiman is involved in the day-to-day operations at American Gods, which he denies, which is another potential problem for that show, but let’s just move on.) Speaking to SyfyWire, Gaiman described the series as “six hours of television that for good or for evil isn’t anything like you’ve ever seen before. [It will be] funny and serious, tragic and glorious. [There will be] treats for people who love the book and surprises for people to love the book.”

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Good Omens, a merry romp about the birth of the Antichrist, came out in 1990. It’s a passion project for Gaiman, who’s is making it at the behest of his late coauthor Terry Pratchett. “He wrote me a letter saying: ‘You have to do this because I want to watch it before the lights go out,” Gaiman told The Guardian. “‘You have the passion of the old girl that I have.’

"Then he died, which made it a last request, so I spent 18 months writing six scripts, reinventing it as television while trying to stay faithful – because we have tens of millions of people who would murder me if it’s not – but I wanted surprises."

Part of me wants to lump Good Omens in with Amazon’s push to conquer all of genre television, but in this case there are signs the producers are exercising restraint. The show started life as a BBC production, and Gaiman doesn’t intend for it to go further than six episodes.

Good Omens is scheduled to premiere on Amazon Prime Video in 2019. American Gods will also drop next year, as you can see in the trailer above…unless problems push it back.

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h/t The Guardian, Indiewire