I know, I know… you’ve heard it before, right? But, Neil Gaiman himself has said that American Gods is now REALLY in development for television.
The company who now own the rights and are set to produce the series is FremantleMedia, best known for reality television like Amercian Idol, The X Factor, America’s Got Talent and game shows like The Price is Right and Family Feud. However, the acquisition of American Gods reflects the recent ramp-up in development activity by FremantleMedia, which has recently taken steps into scripted television, producing The Tomorrow People for The CW with other shows in the pipeline, including Basket Case at Spike and The Returned for A&E. Certainly, they seem to have the positive balance of not having too much on their plate and having lots of money down 🙂
According to Gaiman it was the failed deal that brought about this opportunity with FremantleMedia: “HBO had an option on American Gods for several years. It went through three different pilot scripts. HBO has a limited number of slots and, after a while, passed it to Cinemax, who are in the HBO family, who decided eventually they didn’t want to do it, and the option expired, which unfortunately meant we couldn’t work with Tom Hanks’ production company Playtone any longer, as they are exclusive to HBO. However, Stefanie Berk, who had been one of the brightest stars at Playtone, had recently moved to Freemantle, and was as determined as she had been when she was at Playtone to bring American Gods to the screen. And I was impressed by her determination”
The plot 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.
Despite the good news, Neil Gaiman has admitted that he doesn’t know who will be running the show or who will be cast in it, but added optimistically: “it already looks like it’s going to be a smoother run developing it than it had at HBO, so I am very pleased.”
In addition to the news on American Gods, Gaiman explained that Anansi Boys, about the two sons of the Mr. Nancy character, is also headed for TV, on the BBC as a miniseries.
The difference between the two – based on Neil Gaiman’s comments that “Freemantle has the harder task, as they are going to have to open up American Gods into something bigger than the book. Red are just going to have to make an absolutely brilliant faithful version of Anansi Boys.” seems to be that the plan for American Gods is still the same as when it was with HBO – it’ll be an ongoing series which will need to tell stories beyond the book, while Anansi Boys will be faithful to the book itself and no further.
Jennie Ivins