Gaiman has agreed to continue writing the TV adaptation, after receiving his late co-author’s blessing.
Neil Gaiman will be adapting Good Omens, the 1990 novel he co-authored with Terry Pratchett for television after all, after receiving his late friend’s blessing. Gaiman had initially started work on the project in 2011, but after Pratchett’s death in March 2015 fans were unsure if Good Omens would ever make it to the small screen.
Neil Gaiman is adapting Good Omens for television.
Speaking at a memorial event for the author on Thursday (April 14) Gaiman revealed that one of Pratchett’s last requests to him was that he continue on with the adaptation. “Terry and I [initially] had a deal that we would only work on Good Omens things together,” Gaiman said.
“Everything that was ever written, bookmarks and tiny little things, we would always collaborate. Everything was a collaboration.” But shortly before his death Pratchett sent Gaiman a letter asking his friend to continue on alone.
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“I would very much like this to happen and I know, Neil, that you’re very very busy, but no one else could ever do it with the passion that we share for the old girl,” Pratchett wrote. “I wish I could be more involved and I will help in any way I can.”
On Saturday Gaiman took to his blog to reveal that the Good Omens script is now almost three quarters finished. “I’ve been working on the Good Omens scripts for much of the last year, wishing that [Pratchett] was still here and could help, even if it was just to take a phone call,” he wrote.
“It’s hard when I get stuck, and want to ask his advice. It’s harder when I come up with something clever or funny that’s new and I want to call him up and read it to him, and make him laugh or hear him point out something I’d missed.”
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“We were always each other’s first audiences for Good Omens. That was the point. Neither of us had any idea whether or not we’d be able to sell this odd book or not, when we were writing it, but we knew that we could make the other one laugh. I’m now 72% of the way through the Good Omens scripts, and the end is in sight.”
Good Omens was previously adapted for radio by BBC Radio 4 in 2014, with Gaiman and Pratchett both making cameos. In 2002 there were plans for a Hollywood film version directed by Terry Gilliam, in which Johnny Depp was rumoured to star, however the project never got off the ground.