Neil Gaiman on being his own Good Omens 2 non-disclosure agreement (NDA), working with Amazon & his Muppet casting for Aziraphale & Crowley.
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A new year means it’s time to check in on all of the spoilers that Neil Gaiman has been sharing in regard to BBC Studios & Amazon Prime’s Michael Sheen & David Tennant-starring sequel season to his & the late Sir Terry Pratchett‘s Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (otherwise known as Good Omens 2). Oh, look! There aren’t any! And that’s exactly the subject that’s kicking off this update… spoilers. Specifically, why Gaiman doesn’t need a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to keep from spoiling the experience for all of us. But that’s not all, because if you haven’t visited Gaiman’s Tumblr account then you might now know that he tends to cover a lot of topics. And we appreciate that because we’re more than happy with an interesting take, a random fact, and even an occasional “WTF?” moment. That means we also get to learn Gaiman’s thoughts on working for Amazon, even with so many taking issue with its business practices. And then, the answer we didn’t know we needed to the question we never thought to ask. Aziraphale (Sheen) and Crowley (Tennant) as Muppets. Who gets cast?
Gaiman on Being His Own NDA: “I’m the one who made all the other people sign the Non Disclosure Agreements. I don’t believe I’ve ever signed one. I don’t need to. This is my show. I’m keeping it all to my chest not because I’m legally obligated to but because I don’t want to have spent years building this story and then all the time actually making it into television and then getting it through post-production to see all the things that made the story so much fun to tell simply given away with no emotional impact or importance or respect.”
Gaiman on How He Feels Working with Amazon: “Probably the same way that people using Tumblr who don’t like Amazon cope with the fact that Tumblr runs on Amazon Web Services. ‘Good Omens’ was meant to have been made originally by the BBC, but the budget cuts that the BBC has endured over recent decades meant that once they had approved the scripts, they also had to face the facts that they couldn’t afford to make it without a partner. They approached a number of potential partners, and the only one who was willing to come on board and who enthusiastically understood and embraced what ‘Good Omens’ as TV could be was the Prime Video comedy department. So the BBC did it with them and with BBC Studios producing. (For season 2, the relationship changed slightly, and BBC Studios is making it for Amazon.) I very much hope that Amazon workers get to unionize and get treated better and that the Amazon shopping interface goes back to being useful rather than a parade of sponsored irrelevance. And at the same time, I’ve worked with many other streamers and studios, and networks, and I am very grateful for the people and the culture at Prime Video.
“The Muppets’ Good Omens”? Gaiman Sees Only One Muppet for Aziraphale & Crowley: “Kermit as Aziraphale. A different Kermit puppet with dark glasses on as Crowley.”
When the story continues, Aziraphale and Crowley are getting back into their easy-living lives among the mortals populating London’s Soho. But when an unexpected messenger presents them with a surprising mystery, the game’s afoot once more for our duo. “Oh, it’s wonderful. It’s so much fun,” Gaiman responded when asked how the sequel season was shaping up during an interview with Rolling Stone. “Partly because I learned so much. The first time you do something, you just learn how to do it, and then you can start to play. So when I wrote and made Good Omens, I was learning, how do you do a ‘Good Omens’? I think there’s this thing in my head, but how does it work? I feel like Good Omens season one was ‘Chopsticks.’ This is much more me getting to the whole orchestra.”
Tennant and Sheen are joined by Jon Hamm, Miranda Richardson, Maggie Service, Nina Sosanya, Doon Mackichan, Gloria Obianyo, Liz Carr, Quelin Sepulveda, Shelley Conn, Derek Jacobi, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith, Niamh Walsh, Dame Siân Phillips, Tim Downie, Pete Firman, Andi Osho, and Alex Norton. Benedict Cumberbatch and Frances McDormand will not be returning as Satan and God, respectively. Gaiman will executive produce and serve as co-showrunner with director Douglas Mackinnon. Rob Wilkins, John Finnemore, and BBC Studios Productions’ Head of Comedy Josh Cole also executive produce, with Finnemore co-writing alongside Gaiman. Amazon Studios, BBC Studios Productions, The Blank Corporation, and Narrativia are set to produce Good Omens 2.
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