HBO is planning to debut a six season series based on Neil Gaiman’s novel ‘American Gods’ in 2013, Colllider is reporting. Each season will air 10-12 hour-long episodes and have a budget of $35-40 million.
Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman are on board to produce the series through their company Playtone. Gaiman is attached to the series as a writer and executive producer. Goetzman said each episode will be made for approximately $3 million because there will be some “crazy things…We’ll probably be doing more effects in there than it’s been done on a television series.”
The fantasy-mythology novel follows European gods who came to North America with their immigrant believers. The gods are preparing for a battle with modern technology, including credit cards, Internet, telephone, radio and television.
The gods walk around as ordinary people, which causes trouble for protagonist Shadow Moon. He is released from prison the day after his wife died in a car accident. He then takes a job as Mr. Wednesday’s emissary. But Shadow Moon doesn’t realize that traveling with his boss around America will lead him to see the reanimated corpse of his dead wife. He must reevaluate his own beliefs to determine what his role in the final showdown will be.
‘American Gods’ is 624 pages long, which translates into about eight to eleven pages for each episode. It hasn’t yet been revealed if the events from the novel’s spin-off book, ‘Anansi Boys’, will be included in the series, to expand the content for each episode.
Written by: Karen Benardello