Neil Gaiman fans rejoice! The long-thought unfilmable adaptation of American Gods, Gaiman's Nebula-award-winning novel, has been given the green light by Starz, who are turning the novel into a series of undetermined length. If that's not enough news for you to break out your Shadow garb, the series will have Michael Green of Heroes and, far more exciting, Bryan Fuller of NBC's sublime Hannibal as its showrunners, with Gaiman himself set as an executive producer of the series. This is what Gaiman had to say about the series moving forward:
"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..."
Bryan Fuller and Michael Green also commented on the intensely anticipated series, saying:
“Almost 15 years ago, Neil Gaiman filled a toy box with gods and magic and we are thrilled to finally crack it open and play. We're grateful to have STARZ above us and FremantleMedia at our backs as we appease the gods, American or otherwise."
Here's the official plot synopsis from the press release:
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.
No release date has been set as of yet, but its worth mentioning that this fits in rather nicely with Starz's recent push for more daring original programming. Even for those not familiar with the tome, this should count as the most hotly anticipated premiere on the television in-development docket.