Jim Henson’s Storyteller featuring dark and strange tales of mythology and folklore is returning to the screen thanks to Neil Gaiman.
Jim Henson’s Storyteller
Deadline reported this week that Neil Gaiman is working on a new incarnation of Jim Henson’s 1987 series The Storyteller. Each episode featured the Storyteller (played by John Hurt) sitting by the fireplace weaving dark and whimsical tales of mythology and early European folklore for his talking dog voiced by Brian Henson.
Gaiman is working with Jim Henson Studios and Jim’s daughter Lisa, whose college mythology classes inspired the original series, to develop this reboot as producer and writer. Gaiman’s style and body of work, which includes American Gods, Coraline, The Graveyard Book, and Norse Mythology, seem to make him uniquely suited to bring The Storyteller back to the screen for modern audiences.
“Part of what fascinates me about The Storyteller is the stuff that we don’t know,” he told Deadline. “Who was the Storyteller, why was he telling these stories, was he a goblin, what kind of creature? What I’d love to do is an inside story that’s as long as the outside story. We’re going to find out a lot about who the storyteller is, we’re going to find out things we don’t even know that we don’t know. We’re going to begin in a Northern kingdom where stories are forbidden and where the act of telling a story is liable and can get you imprisoned or executed. If you put a storyteller into that situation, things would need to start getting interactive.”
“Neil Gaiman is an expert in traditional folklore and mythology” Lisa Henson said, “in addition to himself being the modern ‘storyteller’ for our times.”
Read about about Gaiman’s upcoming reimagining of The Storyteller right here.
