Starz is developing a TV series based on Neil Gaiman's American Gods


After a long, long road, Neil Gaiman's bestselling 2001 novel American Gods might finally be headed to the small screen. Starz has announced that its currently developing American Gods as a TV series, with Bryan Fuller (Hannibal) and Michael Green (King) serving as co-showrunners.
"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," Neil Gaiman said in a statement. "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."
It sounds promising — but if this all sounds a little too familiar, you might be flashing back to 2011, when HBO announced that it was developing a TV series based on American Gods. In a recent interview with Vulture, HBO executive Michael Lombardo explained that their inability to make American Gods work as a TV show was "a huge disappointment" for the network. "We tried three different writers, we put a lot of effort into it. Some things just don't happen," he explained. Let's all hope Starz has a little more success with the material.
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Scott Meslow is the entertainment editor for TheWeek.com. He has written about film and television at publications including The Atlantic, POLITICO Magazine, and Vulture.
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