Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is Coming to Starz

Exciting news of the day — FremantleMedia North America’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is being developed over at Starz with Bryan Fuller and Michael Green as showrunners!

American Gods is one of my favorite books of all time, and although I was bummed out when HBO dropped the project, I think this may have turned out for the better. Fuller is the perfect person to be involved in this project, and Starz is making a name for itself in adapting beloved novels for the small screen (like this summer’s highly anticipated series, Outlander).

The pilot is being written by Fuller and Green. They will also serve as executive producers along with Gaiman.

The press release issued by Starz this afternoon included the following from Gaiman:

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.

Fuller also commented on the project:

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.

If you’ve never read American Gods, I highly recommend picking it up. It’s a fascinating story about a war that erupts between old and new gods — the old gods that we know from mythological and religious roots worldwide, and the new gods revered by modern society, which include money, celebrity, media and technology.