American Gods, the highly anticipated new series from Starz, has added David Slade as director and executive producer. It's been a quiet summer on the American Gods front since the project was given the go-ahead by the premium network in mid-JuneBryan Fuller and Michael Greene are set as showrunners, bringing their experience from Hannibal and Heroes, respectively, to usher in a proper adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel.

It was Gaiman himself who broke the news that Slade would be joining the series, with a well-timed Tweet that was just barely edged out by Deadline's own report. Slade's addition reunites him with Fuller, since Slade helmed five episodes of Hannibal over the course of the series. Slade also brings feature film experience to the team, having directed the thriller Hard Candy, the horror film 30 Days of Night, and the unfortunate The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. That last film sent Slade to the world of TV directing, where he's been for the last few years, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.


American Gods is a modern-day mythology that finds a protagonist caught in the midst of a war among the old gods and the new. Gaiman himself will write episodes for the series. Like much of Gaiman's work, it veers into the supernatural and the metaphysical quite often, a facet that surely has Fuller salivating. I'm hopeful that his shorthand will Slade will make for an easy production process, which has yet to get started in earnest. You can expect to see their handiwork when American Gods debuts on Starz in 2017.

Check out Gaiman's tweet welcoming Slade below:

[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/642050174102077440[/EMBED_TWITTER]

Here's the official synopsis for American Gods:

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.

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