Neil Gaiman’s American Gods to get a series on Starz

[Alatar]

http://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2 ... -on-starz/

On Tuesday, cable and satellite network Starz announced that it was moving ahead with a series adaptation of Neil Gaiman's 2001 novel American Gods.

The show will be written and produced by Bryan Fuller and Michael Green. Fuller has worked on shows such as Hannibal, Pushing Daisies, and Heroes, and Green is known for his work on The River and Heroes. Gaiman will be an executive producer for the show.

The book, written in 2001, won Hugo and Nebula awards (which are given for science fiction or fantasy literature) and has been translated into dozens of languages. The story follows the main character, Shadow Moon, who leaves jail to be employed as a bodyguard for the mysterious Mr. Wednesday. The two journey around the US together in preparation for an epic battle between Old Gods from traditional mythology and New Gods representing the ideas and things that Americans worship today.

According to Variety, production of the show will begin as soon as a leading man is found to play Shadow. FremantleMedia North America is the company in charge of production, and it will distribute the series outside of Starz's TV and subscription video on demand (SOVD) rights.

In Starz' press release, Gaiman commented:

I am thrilled, ‎scared, delighted, nervous and a ball of glorious anticipation. The team that is going to bring the world of ‘American Gods’ to the screen has been assembled like the master criminals in a caper movie: I’m relieved and confident that my baby is in good hands. Now we finally move to the exciting business that fans have been doing for the last dozen years: casting our Shadow, our Wednesday, our Laura.

In 2011, HBO was set to get an American Gods adaptation, but the deal fell through, according to Deadline. For it's part, Starz isn't new to Sci-Fi novel adaptations. Most recently, the network has seen some success with its series adaptation of the novel Outlander. On American Gods, Fuller and Green have reported that two scripts have been written already. Neither Starz nor FremantleMedia returned our request for comment.

[yovargas]

Oooooh, interesting.......I love American Gods buuuut a) it's one book, does it really need an entire multi-season TV series? and b) does Starz ever do any shows worth watching? I don't even know what they have....

[Alatar]

SPARTACUS!!!!

BLACK SAILS!!!!

Erm. Ok. Well, they're kinda guilty pleasures.

[Frelga]

I imagine they could use up a lot of time on flashback delving into each god's history. They could even structure the episodes that way, mixing Shadow's story with a god's, which is kind of how the book is anyway.

There's certainly enough sex and violence in the story for modern TV.

I saw only one episode of Black Sails, when Starz did a free promo on cable. It looked good, and there was a lot of story packed in.

[yovargas]

While delving into histories could be cool....I'd have a fear that it'd come off like trying to pad the story to fill time. Seems like a mini-series would be a better idea, IMO.


I do love me some Spartacus. It's pretty great. But it's also pretty awful. Awfully great? Greatly awful?

[Jude]

I suspect the decision comes more from needing to make a TV series and looking for a possible literary source, rather than wanting to adapt American Gods and deciding what format would serve it best.

[River]

I can see American Gods as a mini-series. A multi-season thing? I dunno. Maybe if they really dwell on the gods and also flesh out the biographies from Mr. Ibis's notebooks.

[Inanna]

Am not a big fan of American Gods... While I loved the concept. But I think there is enough background to break it up into 3-4 seasons at least. It's a FAT book.

An aside, Pratchett wrote that after hearing about American Gods from Gaiman he really wanted to write the book himself. Man, that would have been one hell of a book.


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Please bear with my typos & grammar mistakes. Sent from my iPhone - Palantirs make mistakes too.