It's been quite a bumpy road for Neil Gaiman's American Gods to appear on television screens as a TV show, but the fans of the novel can finally take a deep breath: the show has been confirmed to air on Starz, the American cable channel.
Rumours about a potential TV series based on Gaiman's Nebula Award-winning novel has been swirling on the Internet since 2011, when it seemed like that HBO would develop the adaptation in collaboration with the author himself, and would also air it in the near future. Up until 2013, everyone thought that everything would work out just nicely between the parties.
Mr. Gaiman even said that the TV show would go on for several seasons, with only the first two making up the popular book.
However, none of the hired screenwriters could come up with the right script, and HBO abandoned the project late 2013. Then, in 2014, Fremantle Media acquired the rights for the adaptation, and later agreed with Starz to make the TV series, and now the show got the green light from the cable channel, with Bryan Fuller and Michael Green as the developers.
The adaptation will follow the steps of Shadow, a mysterious man who just got released from prison, and Wednesday, who becomes even stranger as the story goes on. Although the novel focuses mainly on these two, Mr.
Fuller said that they would expand the point of view of characters in the show. Before the fans freak out: to do this, they received the permission from Mr. Gaiman, who is reportedly thoroughly involved with the production. There's also a chance that the author will write the script of several episodes, like George R. R. Martin did with HBO's Game of Thrones.
With Starz's green light, the show has begun casting for the main leads, and if everything goes well, then shooting can begin as early as this fall. Mr. Fuller estimated back in May that if they receive the nod from the channel, then the show will likely air in late 2016.
Popular sci-fi and fantasy novels have become the golden eggs for cable channels lately. Just last week Syfy announced the adaptation of Dan Simmon's Hyperion, having already a couple of ongoing projects like 12 Monkeys, Brave New World, The Magicians or Krypton.
