Another Neil Gaiman fantasy series—Anansi Boys—is coming to Amazon
From storyteller who brought Good Omens to the streamer comes a folklore-enriched tale
TV News Amazon
Fantasy writer Neil Gaiman has another series coming to Amazon, based on his 2005 novel Anansi Boys. News of this forthcoming series comes just days after the second season of Gaiman’s other Amazon-produced series, Good Omens was confirmed.
Like Good Omens, which brought the unlikely friendship between a demon and an angel to life, Anansi Boys centers around another unexpected pairing. The timid Charles “Fat Charlie” Nancy has always been embarrassed by his outgoing and eccentric father Mr. Nancy. Upon his father’s death, he learns that his father was in fact the reincarnation of the West African trickster god, Anansi. Fat Charlie also learns that he has a long lost twin brother, Spider, who genetically inherited their father’s powers.
“Anansi Boys began around 1996, from a conversation I had with Lenny Henry about writing a story that was diverse and part of the culture that we both loved. I wrote a novel, an (I hope) joyous and funny book about a dead god and his two sons, about birds and ghosts and beasts and cops, based in Caribbean and African tales. It was my first number one NYT Bestseller, and went on to become a beloved and award winning book,” Gaiman says in a statement.
Gaiman is writing the the 6-part series with actor and comedian Sir Lenny Henry, who narrates the audiobook of Anansi Boys. In a blog post, the novelist explained how he and Henry began their 25-year long collaboration together.
“Lenny and I went for a walk. Lenny grumbled about horror films. ‘You’ll never get people who look like me starring in horror films,’” he said. ‘We’re the hero’s friend who dies third.’ Gaiman writes. “And I thought and blinked. He was right. ‘I’ll write you a horror movie you could star in.’”
The writer reveals that a “top Hollywood director” offered to buy the rights to the story years ago, but Gaiman declined due to the director’s plan to white-wash all of the characters, saying, “It was going to be done properly or not at all.” Hanelle M. Culpepper, Henry, Hilary Bevan Jones and Richard Fee will executive produce the Anansi Boys adaptation Gaiman envisioned, with Culpepper, Jermain Julien, and Azhur Saleem on as directors. The writing team consists of Gaiman, Henry, Arvind Ethan David, Kara Smith, and Racheal Ofori.
“I’ve been a huge fan, and couch sleeping friend, of Neil Gaiman’s for over 30 years and I have loved being a part of the Anansi Boys creative team,” Henry says of the long-coming project. “I love that we’re going to have a suitably diverse cast and crew to tell this joyous story. What’s great is that the whole production is listening and ensuring that inclusion is happening and is being seen to be done.”
None of the cast has been revealed yet, but in the blog Gaiman offers this clue:
“One of our cast members was on a public event with me at some point in the last five years. The first thing she said when we met backstage was that her favourite book was the audiobook of Anansi Boys, read by Lenny Henry. And when I told her that there was a part in the book I’d originally written with her in mind, she was overjoyed. So when it became a reality, she was the first person I asked, and the first to agree.”
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44 Comments
Hell yeah I’ve been waiting for this one!
Can we get Imajica next PLEASE?!?!
So, Orlando Jones gets to make certain people of power very uncomfortable again? I’m for it!
Would love that on Amazon but that’s Clive Barker and I would rather see Weaveworld done. Probably animated too.
I like Imajica better but I wouldn’t complain about Weaveworld 🙂
This one ALSO involves adultery as one of its themes. Who hurt you, Neil?
Read “The Ocean at the End of the Lane.” Much of that is based upon Neil’s youth, including his father’s affair with the babysitter.
Well, that would make a lot of sense then.
That book was SO good it is literally top of my “best” lists.
It’s a major part of the Mr. Punch graphic novel as well.
Finally Neil’s getting to good stuff!
He seems to be more at peace with the basically open marriage he has with the worst person on the planet.
Oh, forgot all about that as well!
It’s basically an American Gods spinoff.
I’m sad that since they’re different productions, we won’t get more Orlando Jones. If they pull that off, I’m in 100%.Though come to think of it, I don’t think Anansi was in the novel very much at all- that’s going off of reading it 15 years ago, so I could be forgetting a lot.
No it’s more about his Anansi’s son, iirc, though it’s been a while for me also.Haven’t read it in so long I don’t have an ebook of it, wow gonna have to rectify that.
It’s the only book I have ever bought the first edition of, mostly because I didn’t know it was a thing until I visited my bookstore and it had come out like a month prior. I’ve read it a couple times, and the most I remember is that there’s a brother, Anansi is missing/dead, and there’s a dragon that’s afraid of nothing.
I see now that it came out in 2005, that seems both too long ago and not long enough ago. It was definitely before I had a Kindle though!
The motivating incident that drives the book is Anansi’s “death.” He’s barely in it, and when he is, he’s an old man. Not a spoiler, it’s the plot.
I don’t think them being different productions is what will keep Orlando Jones away, since he’s no longer under contract with American Gods.That he fucking hates Neil Gaiman for the way he was thrown under the bus and fired from American Gods is more likely to keep him far away from anything else Neil is involved with.
It’s also a much better story than the aimless American Gods.
“the director’s plan to white-wash all of the characters”
Okay, Neil – time to name and shame this unspeakable idiot.
Can we use Brett Ratner as a placeholder? I feel he never gets the full disrespect he’s owed.
Yes, although by that same token I can’t imagine someone like Neil Gaiman ever even taking a lunch with Ratner in the first place.
It would be the bloodiest version of My Dinner with Andre.
My Dinner with Andre 2: 2Full2DineAlternatelyMy Dinner with Andre 2: Inconceivable Boogaloo
Hadda get a Wallace Shawn Princess Bride joke in there 😉
Ratner: “Wasn’t me, but fair enough.”
Neil Gaiman sounds like a genuinely good guy, along the lines of Sir Terry Pratchett. Which of course makes me fearful that someone is going to have dirt on him (or worse, Sir Terry) and reveal…I dunno, him being the guy who got Paul McCartney out of Wings?
The IDIOT! He was the best one!
He did have that fairly messy public separation (then apparently reunion) early in the pandemic that also led to some travel controversy— but it kind of seems like of anything actively awful happened in his past then that press coverage would have made it come up sooner?
Here’s some dirt: he’s nowhere near as good an author as Sir Terry.Here’s a list of things I remember about The Graveyard Book:
That’s not fair though, Sir Terry was possibly one of the best writers of all time. Ain’t too many people at his level.
If we’re taking the mid-tier works of an author and quizzing non-fans of said author, alternatively I don’t think many Neil Gaiman fans could remember many details of Johnny and the Bomb.
Starting with Graveyard Book is odd, considering it’s Sandman that solidifies him as an all-timer.
Other than Good Omens, I’ve never really READ any Neil Gaiman. I’m not a big fantasy fan other than Pratchett, so I’m more than inclined to believe your statement.
I had to read it for uni, because it’s the only youth book with a male protagonist that the batshit insane 1970s TERFs who run Youth & Children’s Writing courses in Aussie universities find acceptable. So, agentless, passive, inoffensive, emo male protagonists have stuff happen to them through no fault of their own, while more powerful forces guide and nurture them through some difficult times, and at the end it’s basically solved through…love or understanding or some such bullshit.
The Graveyard Book is fantastic, so that’s a deeply silly thing to say.
Weird thing to go about life worrying about.
I feel like there’s a pin that’s going to drop someday with Gaiman where he’s been up to Warren Ellis-style shenanigans with the women in his fanbase for years, but for whatever reason it didn’t happen at the same time as it did for Warren (Neil’s got a lot more Hollywood clout than Warren does, so he might be benefiting from that).
There is a TON of overlap in their fanbases, and there was that interview a while back where he was asked if he and Amanda Palmer were in an open relationship and his response was something like ‘not since we’ve had a child.’ Not that everybody who is polyamorous is a sexpest, but there are a lot of parallels between Neil and Warren there.
And then there’s the weird familial Scientology connection that comes up every once in a while.
I mean, he’s basically the holotype the “Guy writer who writes in order to bed girls” – he’s the literary equivalent of the guy with the acoustic guitar on the university quadrangle. So, yeah, it’s inevitable.
No mention that this is a pseudosequel to American Gods?
I didn’t know about Lenny Henry’s involvement aside from the audiobook. That makes me slightly more charitably inclined toward it. I still found it quite derivative and reminiscent of a little known Lenny Henry vehicle Bernard and the Genie, crossed with Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber. But since both Henry and Hopkinson claim to adore Gaiman, I may have to get over my resentment and watch this.
The audiobook of Anansi Boys is better than the text version. Lenny Henry is brilliant. His Fat Charlie is epic.
This is excellent news! American Gods gets more play, but this is my absolute favorite of his novels because he’s not trying so hard to Be Important. It’s just a great story that’s hard not to grin at.
Speaking of Gaiman, any new info on the Sandman adaptation?