Neil Gaiman and The Jim Henson Company are working on a new series of The Storyteller

Fremantle is joining with The Jim Henson Company and Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Good Omens) to develop a new version of The Storyteller.

The original show ran in 1987 and I loved it. John Hurt was The Storyteller in that one and it retold various European folk tales using actors and puppets. Jim Henson directed multiple episodes, while Anthony Minghella wrote all the episodes.

In the new version, Neil Gaiman will write and executive produce. It will be updated to work “for the binging kind” of viewer of today, Gaiman told Deadline.

“Part of what fascinates me about The Storyteller is the stuff that we don’t know” he said. “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.”