We just spotted some extremely exciting news for Neil Gaiman fans over on i09: The writer took to his website yesterday to announce the casting lineup for BBC Radio 4’s upcoming production of his urban fantasy Neverwhere , a tale set in an underground world in London which began as a television series, but Gaiman later fleshed out in novel form. James McAvoy (X-Men), Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock), Natalie Dormer (Game of Thrones), Bernard Cribbins (Doctor Who), Christopher Lee (Lord of the Rings), and Anthony Head (Buffy), are among the featured actors in the radio play, which will also include the author himself, presumably in the role of the narrator.
“The adaptation is by Dirk Maggs, who did the last three Hitchhiker’s Guide Radio adaptations,” Gaiman writes. “He’s co-directing it with producer Heather Larmour, who is the one who went off and made this happen after a small enthusiastic chat in a London coffee shop much earlier this year — the kind of conversation that you have that normally just leaves you feeling happy, but doesn’t actually turn into anything real. This time it did.” According to Gaiman, Neverwhere will be broadcast “somewhere in the first 4 months of 2013” and will be accessible to listeners worldwide using the BBC’s iPlayer. Yay!