Nobody writes a better Neil Gaiman story than Gaiman himself.
HBO was the first to give a shot to developing Gaiman's modern classic novel American Gods as a television series, but none of the writers or showrunners brought in to take a stab at it were able to satisfy the pay-cable network. (HBO is no doubt on the prowl for a new fantasy series to replace Game of Thrones, which is expected to last just two more seasons.)
Starz was the next to step up, and its executives made the brilliant decision to bring in virtuoso showrunner Bryan Fuller to adapt it. Fuller is known throughout Hollywood as the kind of writer who can take any premise — no matter how ridiculous or unfilmable — and make it work as hour-long television. He created ABC's woefully short-lived Pushing Daisies, wrote the only four episodes of Heroes worth watching, and turned The Silence of the Lambs into the cult hit series Hannibal. (Hannibal lasted three seasons but was recently canceled by NBC.)
Starz must have liked what they saw, because less than one year after grabbing the rights, the network green lit American Gods for a full series order. Fuller is co-producing with Gotham's Michael Green, but today Fuller has revealed that another scripter has joined the writing staff, and it's the one person who writes Neil Gaiman best.
According to Collider, Gaiman "is going to be writing episodes of the show." Yes, he said episodes, plural, which means squeeee!
The novel is about a coming war between the "old gods," aka gods from mythology and the Bible that have been around for millennia, and upstart "new gods," entities born out of modern society's obsession with wealth, technology, fame and so on. In the midst of this scenario, the story follows the cross-country road trip of a mysterious ex-con named Shadow Moon and the man he's guarding, Mr. Wednesday, who's actually one of the old gods.
The TV series will expand on the novel, branching out in its points-of-view to include peripheral characters. Starz also has permission to use material from Gaiman's novel Anansi Boys, which is set in the same universe as American Gods.
Starz has not yet set a date for start of production, but casting announcements should come soon.
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