Neil Gaiman charges Terry Gilliam a groat for book option

R.U. Sirius offers up a double scoop of Neil Gaiman this week. First, he interviewed Gaiman on this week's The RU Sirius Show. And then he published the text version on 10 Zen Monkeys.

RU SIRIUS: You're doing something with Terry Gilliam, who is

absolutely one of my favorite directors.

NEIL GAIMAN: Bless! I hope that it happens. Terry has been working

for many years on Good Omens, which is the novel that Terry Pratchett

and I co-wrote about the end of the world…

Terry Gilliam has loved the book for years. He has been working on it

for awhile. He recently came to us and said, "OK. I'm going to get the

rights back to the script that I wrote with this guy called Tony

Grisoni a few years ago. What is it going to cost me to get the option

for myself?" Terry and I put our heads together and thought, well, we

really want Terry Gilliam to make it — we want this to be a Terry

Gilliam film. We've said no to lots of people who want to make it into

a cool, big commercial film… We decided that it should cost him a

groat. And I don't believe they've actually made groats, which is an

old English coin worth about fourpence, since about the 1780s. Which

means he is going to have to go to EBay.

RU: He's going to have to do some searching… a magical quest.

GAIMAN: I mean frankly they're really cheap. We figured out we were

going to need Farthings to pay the agent commission on a groat. I went

to EBay and picked up a farthing for practically nothing.

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