Starz has announced a script to series development of Neil Gaiman’s acclaimed urban fantasy novel “American Gods.” The pilot script will be penned by Bryan Fuller (known best for the weird and wonderful shows such as Hannibal, Pushing Daisies, and Wonderfalls) and Michael Green (of, um, Heroes fame. But the first season was excellent!), who will also showrun the series.
Starz, who are notable for their eclectic taste in television shows – producing Torchwood: Miracle Day and Camelot – have taken on the project from HBO. HBO, who have already produced two blockbuster adaptation hits (True Blood and Game of Thrones), mysteriously declined the show. They broadly cited script problems with bringing it to life, but seeing as they’ve made a show where vampires get high on fairy blood and are given godlike powers from the Lilith of Hebrew myth, it would seem they had other problems with the story.
Neil Gaiman had this to say on the Starz news; “When you create something like ‘American Gods,’ which attracts fans and obsessives and people who tattoo quotes from it on themselves or each other, and who all, tattooed or not, just care about it deeply, it’s really important to pick your team carefully: you don’t want to let the fans down, or the people who care and have been casting it online since the dawn of recorded history. What I love most about the team who I trust to take it out to the world, is that they are the same kind of fanatics that ’American Gods’ has attracted since the start. I haven’t actually checked Bryan Fuller or Michael Green for quote tattoos, but I would not be surprised if they have them. The people at Fremantle are the kinds of people who have copies of ‘American Gods in the bottom of their backpacks after going around the world, and who press them on their friends. And the team at Starz have been quite certain that they wanted to give Shadow, Wednesday and Laura a home since they first heard that the book was out there. I can’t wait to see what they do to bring the story to the widest possible audience able to cope with it.”
Bryan Fuller, who is a dab hand at blending whimsy with reality said; “Neil Gaiman has created the holiest of holy toy boxes with ‘American Gods’ and filled it with all manner of magical thing, born of new gods and old. Michael Green and I are thrilled to crack this toy box wide open and unleash the fantastical titans of heaven and earth and Neil’s vividly prolific imagination.”
All in all, American Gods looks to be the next binge-worthy boxset.