For years, Neil Gaiman’s fantasy tome American Gods was considered unadaptable – much to the dismay of those fans longing for Shadow Moon, Mr. Wednesday and all of the many other deities to leap off the page.
Thankfully, that all changed when Bryan Fuller and Michael Green came attached to a live-action adaptation of Gaiman’s source material, and with only a few days left between now and the show’s premiere – April 30th is the date for your diaries – the excitement for American Gods is palpable.
With an eight-episode arc in place, along with a cracking ensemble cast, all that’s left now is for Starz to pull back the curtain on its American Gods series. It promises to be a dark, brooding take on Neil Gaiman’s ungodly war, and Orlando Jones (Mr. Nancy) believes the show’s multi-faceted nature can be compared to the Marvel Universe and all of its many, many moving parts across film and television. As part of a recent roundtable interview (via Screen Rant), Jones also hinted that the roster of characters is so unique, so diverse, that it’s begging to be expanded into various spinoff series – not unlike the way Marvel handled Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist, before consolidating those story arcs via the upcoming Defenders series.
Per Screen Rant:
There are so many other characters in this show that I think can spin into their own worlds where they’re doing their things and also come back into this world. We’ve obviously seen that a lot on Netflix now where there’s Luke Cage and all these characters in Daredevil are all interchanging with each other’s worlds. This seems like an opportunity to do it even more so in a way that’s I think even a tad more authentic because we all were born of a very specific universe. That’s what I hope happens, I hope we all find ourselves in these different universes up against each other.
Indeed, Orlando Jones has touched base on the possibility of standalone series in the past, and one would assume the likes of Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane), Emily Browning (Laura Moon), Kristin Chenoweth (Easter) and Pablo Schreiber (Mad Sweeney) are just some of the characters in contention.
American Gods is earmarked for a premiere on Starz this Sunday, April 30th – and you don’t want to miss it.