More on "Good Omens" the Movie and Coraline

In a recent e-mail exchange I had with Neil Gaiman he confirmed that Terry Gilliam is the director for the adapation of Good Omens to the screen. On a side note, Gaiman has been working on Coraline and will be doing a signing of the book in the Barnes and Noble in Union Square, NYC on Thursday the 11th. That's today. Update: 07/11 13:15 GMT by CT : I just wanted to say 'Curse Your Terry Gilliam'! Ever since I read Good Omens, I wished I was a film director just so I could direct that book. I guess Terry will do a good job too ;)

Comments

The good omen is slashdot?

[ObviousGuy]

That's not a good omen...

Re:This sounds good, but

[Angry Toad]

Excuse me? Terry is primarily a director, responsible for cinematic masterpieces like Brazil, Time Bandits, Twelve Monkeys, and the (underrated, IMHO) Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Perhaps you're thinking of Terry Pratchett, who co-wrote the book with Gaiman?

Good Omens link

[MartinB]

Perhaps you meant here, or perhaps here.

The right director confirmed!

[Saint Fnordius]

Choosing Terry Gilliam to do Good Omens is perfect. His style and dark humour complement Pratchett and Gaiman's wierd little epic. Although Terry Gilliam is American, he is one of the few directors I'd trust to do this with the right British touch (not too much, but not too little as well).

Now we can hope for an intelligent comedy that doesn't resort to butt (fart) jokes.

Re:The right director confirmed!

[Angry Toad]

There's a great deal of information on the Good Omens movie at a Terry Gilliam fansite called Dreams. Apparently they're actually playing down the comedic aspects of the book. This seems like kind of a smart idea to me - the book done as a faux-serious metaphysical drama, combined with Gilliam's warped worldmaking talents, could really work. A straight-up adaption of the book's (mostly conceptual, descriptive) jokes might fall flat...

Re:HHG

[MartinB]

Clearly whoever wrote that hasn't read one or either of those books.

ISTR PTerry saying that Mort had been optioned, and certainly Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters have already been turned into (reasonably good) animated films.

Old News

[h4mmer5tein]

Dont mean to put a damper on things but this is old news. Good Omens has been in pre-production for 3 years now and Terry Gilliam was always going to direct it. The Hold ups have been with money and financing, not the production team or cast list. Last I saw Terry was waiting to see if the finance would be tied up in time to shoot Good Omens or wether it would get moved down the list a way while he shot Tideland.

Re:Old News

[filth grinder]

You are right, this is old news. In fact, here is an excerpt from a Neil Gaim interview a couple of months ago where he talks about the hold up:

Dan Epstein: Good Omens will never happen right?
Neil Gaiman: Oh, Good Omens may happen. The whole thing about movies is that you never say it might or might not happen until the first day of shooting, and then it's happening. And even then you've got your fingers crossed. There is a great script by him and Tony Grisoni. They got the budget down to $65 million and they raised about 50 million dollars from abroad. All the investors wanted was for an American entity to go in on the final $15 million and guarantee an American distribution deal. There is the problem?they can't find one. There's no American with the balls enough to agree to fund it and have a Terry Gilliam movie. They are scared of him but he's funny, wise and brilliant. Not only that, but he made Twelve Monkeys and The Fisher King which demonstrated that he could easily bring in a movie on time and under budget. Currently the last e-mail that I heard from Gilliam is that Tony Grisoni is doing a rewrite to try and get the budget down to $45 million.

Dan Epstein: I wish I had $15 million to give to Terry Gilliam to make the movie.

Neil Gaiman: You know what? So do I. That's the single most frustrating thing. You want to walk around Hollywood asking everyone where are their balls. So it's not dead until the option is not renewed and the option just came up and it was renewed again. I got the check. You never know what happens with a picture until you're sitting there eating popcorn at the premiere.

The rest of the interview can be seen here

To answer something else, Gilliam is a writer, he wrote Brazil and his other movies (except 12 Monkeys, he co-wrote the script for Fear and Loathing). He was also a writer for Month Python. So, he does know how to adapt novels to film.

Why Slashdotters Should Care About "Good Omens"

[AAAWalrus]

Due to a lack of any posts on this article, and a few ignorant posts that are here, it would seem that Slashdotters don't really know or care about "Good Omens" or what it is. Here's a post to clue you all in. (If you've actually read the book, stop reading. No really! Go read something about Donald Knuth or some rant about Microsoft. Shoo!)

Good Omens is a book co-written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett in (I believe) the early 90's. Neil Gaiman is most famous for writing the Sandman comics (graphic novellas?). Terry Pratchett is most famous for writing the many books in the Discworld series. Basically, Gaiman writes dark and brooding stories, Pratchett writes intensely clever and funny stories. "Good Omens" is the brilliant collaboration of these two minds, producing a hilarious account of Armageddon. The book has been most compared to "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", and while they do share many common qualities, "Good Omens" is more readable and enjoyable to me.

Why should you care? Because the book is THAT good, and Terry Gilliam is THAT good of a director, and the combination of the two could produce a movie that is THAT good. What's the last movie that came out in the theaters that is a genuine cult classic and will be for years to come? It's been a while. Several years. It's hard to come up with one, isn't it? Well, a movie based on "Good Omens" directed by Terry Gilliam has a lot of potential to be just that: a genuine quotable flick that we can watch dozens of times over and enjoy it each and every time.

Again, what I'm saying is important here is that the *potential* is there for a really great movie that we could all love and enjoy, and we should all be pushing for it's release. Wouldn't it be much cooler if we built up hype about this potentially great movie rather than lamenting about how much George Lucas sucks and how he flushed Star Wars down the toilet?

for the most current information on Neil Gaiman...

[Bogatyr]

I suggest consulting Gaiman's weblog which he tends to update at least daily. That way you get his writing without having to wait for the next book, comments, opinions, essays, little short stori es he throws in just because, cool things he's found, etc. a

Coraline

[KFury]

I had the good fortune to go to Gaiman's reading of Coraline last week in Berkeley (the day the book was released, he did a full 3-hour reading of the text to a packed cathedral of 800 people).

Before he began, he confirmed that Henry Selick (Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Monkeybone), who was in attendance, would be directing the movie version of Coraline, and that Michelle Pfeiffer was signed on to play the Mother/Other Mother roles.

It's a great story, and is sort of a shift for Gaiman, targeting a broader aged audience, while remaining dark but more polished (no footnotes, and a more constant narrative tone). The reading was fabulous, and I could totally visualize the movie version.

A friend of mine did a more thorough write-up of the reading for those interseted.

Re:Agnes Nutter, Witch.

[whimdot]

If they want a short title for the film they could try: "Apocalypse? Now?"