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Gaiman’s AMERICAN GODS Being Developed by Bryan Fuller for Starz

Nothing ever really dies, y’all. After the project fell apart HBO, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is coming to STARZ with Bryan Fuller and Michael Green acting as showrunners.

Gaiman’s 2001 novel sees ex-con Shadow Moon recently released from prion and serving as bodyguard to the enigmatic conman Mr. Wednesday, who’s totally not a god in disguise, who’ll lead our hero through a twisty urban fantasy about the slow decline of the world’s deities.

Green previously worked on Heroes and Fuller on Pushing Daisies (with the third season of Hannibal currently in development) with Neil Gaiman joining them as an Executive Producer. I can’t vouch for Green (Heroes was never my cup of tea), but Fuller has an eye for talented visual stylists – a skill I’m hoping he brings to bear on American Gods.

All the way back in 2006, American Gods was under development at HBO with Tom Hanks’ Playtone attached to produce the series. The scuttlebutt at the time was that the network, hoping the match the then-early success of Game of Thrones, hoped to get six seasons out of the novel before FremantleMedia got the rights to the book.

So what went wrong? HBO’s president of programming Michael Lombardo explained last month:

“I think we’re all huge fans of the book, and I think the script just didn’t — we couldn’t craft the script as good as we needed it to be. I think we knew going in that it would be a challenge; every good book is a challenge to adapt it and find the level you need for it. The bar is high now for great dramas. And to find that bar — we tried. So it was a huge disappointment […] We tried three different writers, we put a lot of effort into it. Some things just don’t happen. We have to trust at the end of the day, if you don’t have a star with a great script, you’re just not going to go through with it.”

No word on when the series will air of STARZ (or even head into production), but it’s the Internet, so by all means, begin your fan casting.

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Comments

  1. blur says:

    Neil Gaiman’s novels are awful. American Gods is a plot-less pile of random dreck. I am so disappointed Bryan Fuller is anywhere near this massive piece of FAIL!

  2. Hayley says:

    I love Nerdist — but the amateur editing here (along with the apparent failure to even monitor comments) brings the whole quality of the site down.  

  3. Justin says:

    Couldn’t even finish this article. To many speling ishues…

  4. Raggedy Man says:

    Wednesday: Anthony Hopkins. Everything else I’m sure there are great cast members out there.

    • Corby Daniel says:

      Wouldn’t it be a bit much for Anthony Hopkins to be playing Odin in two entirely different fictional universes?

  5. Editor says:

    1st line: “project fell apart [missing word] HBO”
    4th line: prison NOT prion
    15th line: “hoping TO match”
    28th line: “air ON Starz”

    Goodness. Gaiman is disappointed.