Neil Gaiman is having more of his work adapted than ever before.
The writing of Neil Gaiman is powerful, utterly unique and impossible to categorize. He is a dichotomy: he dreams up dark things no other person could ever fathom, and coyly offers them to the world in the kindest, softest manner. He’s equally at home using a Twitter app and a fountain pen. A writer of novels, short stories, screenplays, comics, picture books and poems, his work inspires many other creators, leading to a couple of big-budget movies: Stardust and Coraline, but more frequently plays, music, short films, radio and visual art. He’s worked on some pretty huge screen projects, like Doctor Who, but there haven’t been as many adaptations of his work as one would expect from an author of his popularity and ingenuity.
That’s changing. Gaiman, as usual, has mentioned plenty of brand-new material in the works — along with a brand-new baby son — but in the last little while, there’s also been a total glut of news about screen adaptations. Nearly every story he’s released has been optioned, but a lot of them — like Anansi Boys, The Graveyard Book and the much-pined-for Good Omens — are stuck in development hell, a hazy someday. However, at the moment, there’s a lot of Gaiman-inspired film and TV projects that actually seem be going ahead, all at once.
‘Lucifer’
The soonest you’ll see the world of Neil Gaiman on screen is in the upcoming Fox property Lucifer. Satan pops up all over the place in fiction, but the devil, as they say, is in the details: this particular version of the Morningstar is a Gaiman creation. The character appeared in Gaiman’s iconic Sandman, which was released by DC imprint Vertigo, and the fourth collection “Season of Mists” focuses on what happened when a dissatisfied Lucifer abdicates his position and hands over the key of Hell to Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams. Lucifer’s personal story was continued in his own Vertigo spin-off, written by Mike Carey. The show will follow a similarly disenchanted-with-Hell devil who owns a nightclub in Los Angeles. The Lucifer pilot was screened at San Diego Comic-Con this year (read our review here; we loved it) and the series is currently slated for January 2016. Tom Ellis stars as the charming and earthly Lucifer.
‘How to Talk to Girls at Parties’
How to Talk to Girls at Parties is a fan-favorite Neil Gaiman short story set in the early days of the London punk scene, reminiscent of the author’s own adolescence. It’s about a couple of young teenage boys who go to a party to meet girls and encounter some very unusual exchange students — less intercontinental, more interplanetary. John Cameron Mitchell, creator of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, is currently fleshing the short story out into a feature film, starring Nicole Kidman, Elle Fanning and Alex Sharp. Production is under way. How to Talk to Girls at Parties can be found in Gaiman’s short story collection Fragile Things, but it was also released as a novella on its own, and a limited edition print by Camilla d’Errico, pictured above, was sold through Gaiman’s online merchandise store Neverwear. You can read the story in full on Gaiman’s website.
‘Likely Stories’
UK cable channel Sky Arts recently and rather unexpectedly announced that they’re about to commence shooting on a new Neil Gaiman TV adaptation, Likely Stories. The four-part series is to based on Gaiman’s short stories and will star an ensemble cast. This is an incredibly exciting project and something that’s well overdue. It sounds like the directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard will be going with some of the more surreal stories, as their mission statement mentions “conjuring a psychological, conceptual and physical state between reality and hallucination.” With Gaiman’s three major collections for adults (Smoke and Mirrors, Fragile Things and Trigger Warning,) more for kids, other anthologies and countless random pieces published all ove, the trouble must have been narrowing down which of Gaiman’s dozens of short stories to pick from. Some of our humble suggestions would be “Changes,” “Sunbird,” “Orange,” “A Calendar of Tales,” or “The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains,” a very visual piece with illustrations by Eddie Campbell.
‘American Gods’
In case you’ve been living under House on the Rock, the American Gods TV show is finally happening for the Starz network, helmed by none other than Bryan Fuller. American Gods is Neil Gaiman’s longest and most famous novel for adults, lauded as a portrait of contemporary America and a modern classic. It follows the story of newly widowed ex-con, Shadow, as he discovers that all the gods in mythology are very real — as long as someone believes in them. American Gods is a huge feat in world-building, something the TV show should reflect — Fuller recently claimed that he wants to create an equivalent of the MCU, with gods instead of superheroes — and the concept art we’ve seen, including Shadow’s bone orchard above, looks incredible. Gaiman is serving as an executive producer on the show, and Fuller’s an exceedingly passionate, open-minded and uncompromising showrunner, so to say our hopes are high for this collaboration would be an understatement. Casting for the show is under way, so maybe we should expect an announcement at San Diego Comic-Con 2016 and a 2017 premiere?
‘Fortunately, The Milk’
We mentioned that pretty much every book Neil Gaiman writes gets optioned, but this one’s a very quick turnaround — Fortunately, The Milk, Gaiman’s humorous novel for children about a father who goes out to buy some milk for breakfast and is waylaid by some very unlikely obstacles, was published in 2013 and is already well on its way to the big screen. A Fortunately, The Milk movie was announced very recently, with Bret McKenzie attached to write, Edgar Wright attached to direct and Johnny Depp attached to star — possibly as an animated character voice. Animal Logic, the triumphant Australian animation studio behind The Lego Movie, will be doing the visual effects for the movie, which will shoot in Sydney around 18 months from now. The idea of Edgar Wright working on a Neil Gaiman story is a thing cool nerd dreams are made of, and Fortunately, The Milk is sure to be a huge hit for kids and adults.
‘The Sandman’
The Sandman comic series is the work that elevated Gaiman to cult celebrity status over 20 years ago. The eponymous Sandman is Dream, or Morpheus, who’s something more than a god — he and his siblings, including Death and Desire, are known as The Endless, anthropomorphic beings who control and represent the experiences of personhood. The first issue of what became a completely original and self-contained ten volume story set within the wider DC universe was published in 1989 and ran until 1996. It remains one of the most beloved comics of all time, with a 25th anniversary prequel six-issue series called Sandman: Overture recently completed by Gaiman.
Movie adaptations involving Gaiman’s Dream or Death characters have been planned and dropped since the 1990s, and Gaiman has been protective and critical over the prospect. In 2007 he stated “I’d rather see no Sandman movie made than a bad Sandman movie. But I feel like the time for a Sandman movie is coming soon. We need someone who has the same obsession with the source material as Peter Jackson had with Lord of the Rings or Sam Raimi had with Spider-Man.” It seems like that time has finally come. In 2013, DC darling David S. Goyer announced that he’ll be producing a film adaptation alongside actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Gaiman himself, and filming is hopefully taking place in 2016. Jack Thorne, who penned Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, wrote the initial script for the Goyer project.