After Freemantle Media picked up the rights to American Gods earlier this year, it’s not a surprise to hear some new movement on it, though it is a bit surprising to hear as much as we are as quickly as we are. With Freemantle Media moving more into hourlong drama productions in the last year or two, it appears that they’re aiming right when it comes to the adaptation of American Gods. The project is setting up shop at Starz with a script to series agreement. If the network likes the script for the pilot, it’ll go to series and likely be 8 episodes as that’s what Starz has been working with when it comes to new properties lately. The project has brought on a pair of solid people to get things rolling as Bryan Fuller from Pushing Daisies and other series is on to write while Michael Green will be the showrunner, who has plenty of experience with properties like this and long running TV shows.
Writer Neil Gaiman commented on the news of the team being put together, saying, “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.”
Plot concept: The story 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.
