Bryan Fuller successfully adapted "Hannibal" for television on NBC, and now the writer/producer has an even more daunting task ahead of him by bringing "American Gods" to the small screen for the Starz network.
"American Gods" is an award-winning novel written by Neil Gaiman from 2001. The book focuses on a man named Shadow Moon who gets out of jail and is soon working for a con man named Mr. Wednesday. Soon, Shadow finds himself travelling with Wednesday across America to become part of a war that is brewing between the gods of old and today's modern gods of media, money and technology.
Bryan Fuller, who also worked on "Heroes," "Pushing Daisies" and "Dead Like Me," will be producing along with Michael Green, from "The River" and "Heroes," for FremantleMedia North America. Writer Neil Gaiman will also be an executive producer for the series.
This will be the second attempt at an adaptation of "American Gods." It was announced in April 2011 that the novel would be adapted as a series for HBO. But in November 2013, talking on Reddit, Gaiman revealed that the series would no longer be coming to HBO and that it would be shopped around to other studios and channels.
Neil Gaiman, no stranger to adaptations, with his books "Stardust" and "Coraline" having been adapted for film, had written several versions of the pilot script for the HBO adaptation of "American Gods." It has not been announced if Gaiman will be writing for the new Starz series.
Beyond questions of cast and crew, there are logistical issues with adapting "American Gods." The book features a complicated structure that jumps between the modern day story of Shadow and mythological asides that take place at different times and places in the world. Will those occasional diversions appear in the show? And the original plan was for the book to serve as the source for the first season of the HBO adaptation, before moving on to new stories involving Shadow and the book's other characters. There is no word on whether or not that is still the plan.
"American Gods" has won many awards, including Best Novel awards from the Hugo Awards, Nebula Awards, Locus Awards and Bram Stoker Awards. Neil Gaiman is also known for the "Sandman" comic books, "Neverwhere" and "The Graveyard Book."
