Filming is due to start in November on a four-part TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s short stories.
The series, entitled Neil Gaiman’s Likely Stories, is being produced by Sid Gentle Films, the independent production company set up in 2013 by Sally Woodward Gentle, for UK satellite channel Sky Arts.
Woodward Gentle was previously creative director at Downton Abbey producer Carnival Films, and her long list of credits includes Whitechapel and the Channel 4 adaptation of William Boyd’s novel, Any Human Heart.
Details of the Gaiman adaptations are sketchy but the production company said that the series would be based on “the fantastical shorts stories from the pen of Neil Gaiman.” It added: “There will be an ensemble cast across all four of these tales”.
Shooting is due to start at the end of November, under the direction of Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, best known for their 2014 biopic of Nick Cave, 20,000 Days on Earth.
Forsyth, from Manchester, and Newcastle-born Pollard together won Best Debut Director for the film at the 2015 Independent Film Awards and take an experimental approach to their films. Their mission statement is to “cross the illusion of cinema with the presence of theatre, conjuring a psychological, conceptual and physical state between reality and hallucination.”
Gaiman’s career takes in comic books, prose fiction, drama and children’s books, and work has been heavily adapted for both cinema and TV. His first “proper” novel American Gods is currently in production as a TV series and it was announced this week that his children’s book, Fortunately, The Milk, is to be filmed with Johnny Depp and director Edgar Wright.
It is not yet known which of his short stories are to be adapted for the series, but the producers have plenty to choose from. Gaiman has published four collections of shorts – Angels and Visitations (1993), Smoke and Mirrors (1998), Fragile Things (2006) and his most recent, Trigger Warning, from this year.
A perennial favourite Gaiman short among fans is How To Talk To Girls At Parties, but that is already in production as a full-length movie, starring Elle Fanning and Nicole Kidman.
