I have found Film Ick to be one of the less reliable sources on the internet – they report just about any information they get, so be suitably wary of the following information (although much of it is based on old news and solid conjecture):
The blog is reporting that Neil Gaiman will start shooting his Death adaptation later this year, and that the actress playing the anthropomorphic personification of the end of life will be announced soon… and that she’s someone famous (please be Jessica Simpson, please be Jessica Simpson!*). Death, of course, is the adaptation of Gaiman’s Sandman spin-off miniseries of 1992, about how one day every century Death takes human form and lives among us, to understand what it is that we’re losing when she dies. In the comic she takes a young man on a journey of self-discovery. And then he dies. I think, I haven’t read it since like 1995. But the rest of that is true.
Gaiman and Guillermo del Toro recently had a meeting in the UK – Gaiman said as much on his blog weeks ago. Film Ick says that the meeting was about the Death movie, although I don’t know what kind of a role Guillermo would have in it beyond offering Neil some friendly advice and enthusiasm.
The film still has the involvement of Shia LaBeouf, who has been attached to play the human/living lead in the movie since 2005. Gaiman himself has adapted his own comic book and Hot Topic fave, Death: The High Cost of Living, and will be directing the movie.
It’s worth noting that Gaiman’s short film, A Short Film About John Bolton, is actually pretty good and shows that the writer, while he has a reputation for gothic mopiness, has a nice bit of visual wit behind the camera. Hopefully Death: The High Cost of Living will recapture the feelings I had at the time when that story was originally published. Of course the feelings I had were, ‘Holy shit, I can use a comic book to get laid.’ Because girls love that Neil Gaiman stuff.
*Just kidding.