In what can only be described as "divine intervention," an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Good Omens is coming to Amazon Prime Video in 2018. Coincidence? Come on, you know better than that.
On Jan. 19, one day before the 67th United States Presidential Inauguration, in which a one-time reality television host will be sworn into what is arguably the most powerful position in the world, Amazon announced that Gaiman would be heading up the adaption of his beloved novel into a "comedic apocalypse" miniseries for Amazon and the BBC.
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, which Gaiman co-wrote with the late Terry Pratchett in 1990, details the comedy of errors that is humanity's path to the apocalypse. Aziraphale, an angel posing as a used books dealer, and Crowley, a playboy demon, have been living amongst humans since The Beginning - and frankly, they like this lifestyle too much to accept The Rapture. The pair sets off to halt the end of the world, and almost immediately run into a bit of an issue: uh, someone seems to have misplaced The Antichrist. Featuring characters like War, a female war correspondent, and Famine, a diet book author (yep, those are two of Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse), and Anathema, an omen-deciphering witch, Good Omens ultimately turns a mirror on humanity, forcing us to confront how ridiculous this world really is.
Said Gaiman, "Almost 30 years ago, Terry Pratchett and I wrote the funniest novel we could about the end of the world, populated with angels and demons… Three decades later, it’s going to make it to the screen. I can’t think of anyone we’d rather make it with than BBC Studios, and I just wish Sir Terry were alive to see it.”
Ugh, Neil, come on, man. Our base emotional level is too fragile for this right now.
Gaiman will be writing the script for the six-part series and serving as showrunner (and rumor has it those six episodes are already written). In addition, an adaptation of Gaiman's 2001 novel American Gods is set to premiere as a Starz series later this year. At least 2017 is looking up for one person, right?
