The Dreaming

Neil Gaiman chats with the nerds about American Gods, describes scenes that were cut from his Doctor Who ep (“The Doctor’s Wife”) and doles out PHENOMENAL advice for aspiring writers. Also, an intense spiritual discussion reveals that we are all Hodgman.

Listen here.

Neil Gaiman shows his songwriting chops at Minnesota Public Radio’s Wits with a song he wrote as part of the 8in8 project. He performs “The Problem with Saints” with Josh Ritter (@joshritter), John Munson (@munsongs), Steve Roehm, The Ascots and The Brass Messengers.

via BoingBoing.

io9 has a great interview with Neil on the upcoming HBO series.

Obviously, everyone is really excited about the show and its being six seasons long. Do you have any definite plans or ideas you’re excited about?

We want to keep as much of the book in as possible, because that’s what everybody fell in love with. I don’t know how much I can say. My whole thing is trying not say anything until everyone is cast, you’ve got a pilot that’s been filmed that everybody loves and you’ve got a go-date. Talking too much about things is, I think, always foolish. I will say that currently the plan is basically the book American Gods is the first season. We have many plans beyond that, but the book will be the first season.

Yes, I’m excited!

IO9 has the story.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tom Hanks’ Playtone Productions will produce six seasons worth of Neil Gaiman’s 2001 earthbound-deities novel American Gods.

[...]

The series-in-development, revolving around the question “are you a god if no one believes in you?” is executive produced by [Gary] Goetzman and Hanks, with Bob Richardson, and Gaiman on board as executive producer and writer.

Each of the six seasons will be of 10-12, hour-long episodes with a budget of around $35-40 million per season, targeted to debut on the cable powerhouse in 2013 at the earliest [...] American Gods will be effects-heavy to do justice to the awe-inspiring power of the divine beings. “There are some crazy things in there. We’ll probably be doing more effects in there than it’s been done on a television series,” said Goetzman.

Via SelectedShorts

Dare we dream?

As HBO prepares to unveil its epic-sized series adaptation of George RR Martin’sGame of Thrones this Sunday, the payweb has begun talks to acquire the Neil Gaiman novel American Gods to be developed into another fantasy series. The project was brought to HBO by Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and it was brought to them by Robert Richardson. The plan is for Richardson and Gaiman to write the pilot together.

More at Deadline!

BEIJING – Neil Gaiman, the award-winning writer of The Sandman comics and the novella Coraline, has signed on to pen English scripts for a big-budget series of 3D feature films based on Journey to the West, China’s classic novel about the adventures of the Monkey King.

More at the Hollywood Reporter.  Found via The Huffington Post, who were kind enough to link to us.

I’m not familiar with Journey to the West so I checked it out on Wikipedia:

Journey to the West (simplified Chinese: 西游记; traditional Chinese: 西遊記; pinyin: Xī Yóu Jì; Wade–Giles: Hsi-yu chi) is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. Originally published anonymously in the 1590s during the Ming Dynasty, its authorship has been ascribed to the scholar Wu Cheng’en since the 20th century. In English-speaking countries, the tale is also often known simply as Monkey. This was one title used for a popular, abridged translation by Arthur Waley. The Waley translation has also been published as Adventures of the Monkey God, Monkey: [A] Folk Novel of China, and The Adventures of Monkey, and in a further abridged version for children, Dear Monkey.

Oh that story!  Now I’m even more excited!

If this is successful it might encourage a studio to adapt Bridge of Birds.  It’s not technically Chinese literature but it’s set in “An Ancient China That Never Was” is wonderful and funny amazing and why haven’t you read it yet?

Finally!  TVOntario has created an archive for their shows, including their excellent 90′s comic-and-geek interview show Prisoners of Gravity!  They’re all great, but of particular interest to Gaiman fans is their “The Sandman” episode.

I really hope this archive grows. The shows are very well done and chock full of interesting interviews.

(via BoingBoing.net)