Neil Gaiman‘s best-selling, award-winning novel ‘American Gods’ is being adapted for television on Starz with Fremantle media.  Gaiman had previously been working with HBO in hopes of producing the show on that network, but obviously that didn’t work out.

Bryan Fuller and Michael Green will serve as showrunners.  The pair served as showrunners on ‘Heroes‘ (back when it was good).  Fuller created and oversees the hit NBC series ‘Hannibal‘ while Green has overseen ‘Smallville’, ‘Everwood’ and ‘Kings’.  The pair will be scripting the pilot episode of ‘American Gods’.  Both along with Gaiman will also serve as executive producers.  It’s expected that Gaiman may also contribute as a writer on the show, as he has been working as a screewriter in recent years for ‘Doctor Who‘.

Here is Starz’ press release:

The 2001 novel has been translated into over 30 languages and earned numerous accolades including Hugo, Nebula and Bram Stoker Awards for Best Novel. The plot posits a war brewing between old and new gods: the traditional gods of biblical and mythological roots from around the world steadily losing believers to an upstart pantheon of gods reflecting society’s modern love of money, technology, media, celebrity and drugs. Its protagonist, Shadow Moon, is an ex-con who becomes bodyguard and traveling partner to Mr. Wednesday, a conman but in reality one of the older gods, on a cross-country mission to gather his forces in preparation to battle the new deities.

Meanwhile, here is Gaiman’s vote of confidence for his collaborators:

“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.”

Gaiman’s novel contains elements of horror and fantasy and examines the often touchy subject of religion.  What do you think?  Will you be checking this one out?

Source: Screen Rant