The first teaser trailer for Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens has arrived, and let’s just say that 2019 can’t come soon enough. The six-part series is based on the 1990 cult novel Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and was adapted for the small screen by Gaiman himself.
Good Omens follows an angel, Aziraphale (Michael Sheen), and a demon, Crowley (David Tennant), as they try to stop the impending apocalypse threatening to destroy Earth. The only problem is they don’t get along, and they also seem to have misplaced the Antichrist. They are joined by Jon Hamm, playing the angel Gabriel, and Frances McDormand as the voice of God.
The trailer is delightfully funny, and gives us a peak at the centuries long love-hate dynamic between Aziraphale and Crowley, who have been stationed on Earth since the dawn of time. Sheen said of the odd couple, “They really annoy each other, but they do really enjoy each other.” Tennant described the dynamic, saying “and they enjoy being appalled by each other, yet throughout the eons, they’ve been saving each other’s bacon, repeatedly.”
Gaiman and Pratchett worked for years to adapt the novel into a movie. In 2002, Terry Gilliam was briefly attached to direct with a rumored cast of Johnny Depp and Robin Williams as Crowley and Aziraphale, respectively. The film never came together, and fellow Monty Python alum Terry Jones was in talks to turn the novel into a series in 2011. Those plans fell apart as well and after the 2015 death of Pratchett, Gaiman quit pursuing any adaptation.
But a letter from Pratchett, shortly before his death, urged Gaiman to continue on with the project. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Gaiman said of Pratchett:
“Terry never asked for anything in 30 years of friendship,” Gaiman explains. “He wrote me, ‘Look, you have to do this because you’re the only person with the same passion for the old girl as I have. You have to make this, and I want to watch it.’ And then he died fairly shortly after, which left me in this place where it was now a last request and something that I had to come through on.”
Are you looking forward to Good Omens?
(via Entertainment Weekly, image: screengrab)
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