Starz and Fremantle Media are teaming up to create a television series adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.
According to the A.V. Club, Heroes screenwriter Bryan Fuller will pen the pilot script and Smallville producer Michael Green will take on the showrunner position. Both men along with Gaiman himself will serve as executive producers.
Gaiman had this statement in the press release: “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.”
In the past, HBO held the option for American Gods. io9 reports that the team let it go after running up against severe issues with the script. In an interview Vulture, president of programming Michael Lombardo explained: “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.”