Neil Gaiman just confirmed Good Omens 2 is coming with the late Terry Pratchett’s blessing

Just as I’m getting ready for bed, news I never dared pray for drops… Neil Gaiman just confirmed Good Omens 2 is coming!

Now, on reading this was a little annoyed… allow me to explain.

When Good Omens the novel came out in 1990 I was there on release day; a novel from Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett?!? How could you not be? And, after reading it within a couple of days, I was completely enamored with it.

Then, when I heard Gaiman was bringing us a TV series with David Tennant and Michael Sheen as the lead characters of Crowley and Aziraphale, I was delighted… this casting was, well, perfect.

And, when it hit our screens in 2019, in the middle of a pandemic no less, it was an utter delight, as near perfect as it could be.

And, when it was over I felt a certain amount of superiority as I seemed to be the only person on the planet who seemed to know a sequel wasn’t coming. That was it. That was the story Gaiman and Pratchett wanted to tell.

And then, here was are tonight… Good Omens 2 confirmed. And my blood ran cold.

I feared it was to be a cash-in, without the blessing of the late, great Terry Pratchett and, perhaps, without Gaiman even involved.

But I was wrong, very wrong. Gaiman in back to guide the series and he’s written in his online journal that this was a story that he and Pratchett came up with and that Pratchett wanted to happen as a TV series. It seems that, just as Douglas Adams had planned different versions of his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Pratchett and Gaiman had a plan if these two fallen, but wonderful, angels ever made it to the screen.

And it’s coming.

I’ll let Gaiman himself explain:

Terry [Pratchett] was clear on what he wanted from Good Omens on the telly. He wanted the story told, and if that worked, he wanted the rest of the story told.

So in September 2017 I sat down in St James’ Park, beside the director, Douglas Mackinnon, on a chair with my name on it, as Showrunner of Good Omens. The chair slowly and elegantly lowered itself to the ground underneath me and fell apart, and I thought, that’s not really a good omen. Fortunately, under Douglas’s leadership, that chair was the only thing that collapsed.

So, once Good Omens the TV series had been released by Amazon and the BBC, to global acclaim, many awards and joy,  Rob Wilkins (Terry’s representative on Earth) and I had the conversation with the BBC and Amazon about doing some more. And they got very excited. We talked to Michael Sheen and David Tennant about doing some more. They also got very excited. We told them a little about the plot. They got even more excited.

What it was mostly like shooting Good Omens: peering into screens while something happened round the corner.

I’d been a fan of John Finnemore’s for years, and had had the joy of working with him on a radio show called With Great Pleasure, where I picked passages I loved, had amazing readers read them aloud and talked about them.

I asked John if he’d be willing to work with me on writing the next round of Good Omens, and was overjoyed when he said yes. We have some surprise guest collaborators too. And Douglas Mackinnon is returning to oversee the whole thing with me.

So that’s the plan. We’ve been keeping it secret for a long time (mostly because otherwise my mail and Twitter feeds would have turned into gushing torrents of What Can You Tell Us About It? long ago) but we are now at the point where sets are being built in Scotland (which is where we’re shooting, and more about filming things in Scotland soon), and we can’t really keep it secret any longer.

There are so many questions people have asked about what happened next (and also, what happened before) to our favourite Angel and Demon. Here are, perhaps, some of the answers you’ve been hoping for.

As Good Omens continues, we will be back in Soho, and all through time and space, solving a mystery which starts with one of the angels wandering through a Soho street market with no memory of who they might be, on their way to Aziraphale’s bookshop.

(Although our story actually begins about five minutes before anyone had got around to saying “Let there be Light”.)

This is superb news and I’m officially pacing the floor until we get more news.

Are you as excited as I am? Let me know…

Source: Neil Gaiman