Okay, you could say that this is not amazingly awesomeness in its own right but if you did it would only very clearly demonstrate that your brain is broken.
Seriously, this is great news. Neil Gaiman‘s American Gods is being brought to HBO for a multiple season multi-million dollar run with Tom Hanks behind the project. The one drawback? We have to wait until 2013 for the Gaiman Goodness that is American Gods.
From Gaye Birch and the folks at Den of Geek:
Neil Gaiman’s American Gods television plans revealed. HBO has ambitious plans for its TV series of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. Here’s our round-up of what we know…
Last March, we reported that Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, a single novel with plenty of big concepts and ideas, was being adapted for a film. But in just a few short months, those plans have transformed, perhaps appropriately in line with the book’s subject, into a TV series.
HBO is planning, not one, but six series of ten to twelve episodes, starting, we’d guess, with events taking place in the one novel. As much as we enjoyed the book about transplanted gods, struggling to keep a foothold in the hearts and minds of those whose existence they depend on to survive, it’s plain to even those who’ve never read the book that there’s not sixty-plus hours of television treatment material within those pages between those two covers.
The hope is, of course, that Neil Gaiman himself will be at the writers’ table, or wherever he finds most comfortable, to add more godly meat to the bones of the book, which could easily carry on from where it left off.
More Gaiman in any form would be hungrily devoured by readers of this site, no doubt, with the recent Doctor Who episode, The Doctor’s Wife, serving as a champion of Gaiman tales on telly, and we’d welcome more TV treatment of anything he’s written or may write.
The cinematographer Gaiman hinted about in the earlier story is now revealed to be Robert Richardson (Inglourious Basterds, Shutter Island, Casino), surely a deciding factor in greenlighting the planned multi-series adaptation for the small screen.
HBO, too, has shown us just how much it can accomplish with cherished works of fiction in the much admired Game Of Thrones, leaving us feeling secure about Mr Gaiman’s words in its hands.
The series is planned for a 2013 start.
Tom Hanks is the puppeteer behind this project of bringing one of Gaiman’s greatest novels to the small screen and he’s already committed to the six year run of the beastie at a hefty bankroll.
Koolness indeed.
– Brian
