In the words of Wednesday, “All is well, and all is well, and all shall be well.”
But I don’t know, maybe you just didn’t hear me when I said that Bryan Fuller is working on the American Gods production team.
The Hollywood Reporter has it that Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, Pushing Daisies, 1313 Mockingbird Lane, Dead Like Me) is working with the network Starz on the adaptation of The Neil’s sprawling and lush roadtrip through the American mythscape–the resonant and divisive opus that is American Gods.
If you’ll remember, the last time we talked about the American Gods adaptation, it was going to be a movie, and then a show, and then an HBO series produced by Tom Hanks, and then and then and then…! But a lot can change in three years, and now we have Bryan Fuller–recent recipient of the Saturn Awards for both Best New Show and the Dan Curtis Legacy Award–adding his production clout and lyrically visionary skill to what was already a hotly anticipated project.
Needless to say, the entire Internet has exploded.
FreemantleMedia is the currently-helming production company, with Thom Beers, Craig Cegielski and Stefanie Berk on executive producing duties for the show–right next to Fuller, Michael Green and, most importantly, Neil Himself. I was extremely worried when I first heard that FMNA’s most well-known products to date had been variations on the live performance competition genre, but I was assuaged when I realised two things:
1) It’s not so much that they’re producers of derivative “reality” TV, as it is that they are the producers of the live competition shows of which everyone has made derivations. They know how to make TV that works. Now, this can be bad, because, at its worst, “TV that works” could just mean formulaic crap…but at its best it can mean knowing how to subvert that formula, and the expectations that go along with it. Plus they have a crap ton of money to throw at this project.
And 2) Neil is enamoured of this production team. As he said to THR:
So I, for one, have some renewed hope that when this show finally hits screens, it’ll be as close to perfect as we could hope for.
I mean, Fuller’s already shown himself capable of working with animal people, right?
