I may have mentioned it before, but I bloody love Neil Gaiman! I’ve been a fan of his work for a long while, so naturally I was rather excited when it was announced that Gaiman’s multi-award winning novel American Gods is being adapted into a television series by Starz.
The series showrunners are Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies, Hannibal) and Michael Green (The River, Heroes), who will both be writing the pilot episode and are said to be creating a series that honours the book. In the official statement, Bryan Fuller said: "Neil Gaiman has created the holiest of holy toy boxes with American Gods and filled it with all manner of magical things, born of new gods and old. Michael Green and I are thrilled to crack this toy box wide open and unleash the fantastical titans of heaven and earth and Neil's vividly prolific imagination."
"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,” Gaiman commented. “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."
The series will follow ex-con Shadow Moon in the modern-day United States as a war is brewing between the old gods (the gods and beings of ancient cultures and mythology) and the new gods (who reflect modern society’s obsession with media, celebrity, technology, economy etc.). I have very high hopes for this series!
And with the BBC currently developing a mini-series adaptation of Anansi Boys, as well as talk of a potential Sandman film (directed and possibly starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the future is looking bright, and made out of screens both big and small, for Neil Gaiman fans.