Good Omens was published by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett 28 years ago. The book has gone on to be a fan-favorite among readers of both authors and will finally be making it to the small screen thanks to Amazon Prime in the coming months. The six-part TV series sports a notable cast, but what may be more exciting is the fact that Gaiman has signed on as the showrunner and a writer for the Good Omens TV series. It's not easy to start a brand new job, and Neil Gaiman revealed at Comic-Con that doing the Amazon series was even more of a challenge than he expected, because Terry Pratchett wasn't around to help him when the going got hard. He said:
The biggest challenge for me was the absence of Terry Pratchett from this world. It meant that when I was writing scripts, every time I got stuck I couldn't do what I did when I was writing the novel, which was phone Terry. And every time I did anything clever, I couldn't phone Terry and say this clever thing. It was just sort of me doing it for the both of us. And that was kind of hard.
Speaking during an Amazon TV panel that CinemaBlend attended at Comic-Con, Neil Gaiman had a lot of fun and positive things to say about bring Good Omens to television, especially where the likes of casting David Tennant and others were involved. However, the prominent author and now-showrunner also got heartfelt for a few minutes while talking about Terry Pratchett, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease late in his life and who passed away at the age of 66 in 2015. He left behind a slew of published works and even more unfinished writings at the time of his death.
We've known for quite a long time that it was Neil Gaiman who pitched the idea of working together on a written project to Terry Pratchet several decades ago. Good Omens featured both of their characters, not just Gaiman's, and it's easy to see how it was a challenge to return to those characters all these years later without having his writing partner there to help him through some of the tough stuff. Still, Gaiman seems to have muddled along OK without his partner in crime and we'll get the chance to check out the small screen version of the popular apocalyptic novel, soon. For now, Amazon has also released a behind-the-scenes look at the series, which you can check out, below.
We first learned that Good Omens would be becoming a TV series at the beginning of 2017. It's taken quite a bit of time to put the TV series together for Amazon, but we got to see some actual footage at Comic-Con featuring David Tennant's character and Michael Sheen's having a quirky conversation. Amazon has yet to announce a specific release date, yet, but the show is expected to premiere on Amazon Prime in early 2019. We'll let you know as soon as a date is official. Be sure to revisit your favorite Good Omens moments with the book.
