If you haven't read American Gods, you need to. If you have, how would you feel about HBO making it into a mini-series?
Deadline reports that:
"...the payweb has begun talks to acquire the Neil Gaiman novel American Gods to be developed into another fantasy series. The project was brought to HBO by Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and it was brought to them by Robert Richardson. The plan is for Richardson and Gaiman to write the pilot together."So is this bad news? Good news? Great news?!
Robert Richardson is no slouch, with films like Inglorious Bastards, Kill Bill, and Shutter Island under his belt. But do novels work in weekly episodes? The BBC's Pride and Prejudice series, starring the recent Academy Award winner, Colin Firth, is largely regarded as the book's best screen adaptation, and ABC's Walking Dead has been an immediate success and overwhelming achievement as far as these things go, though P&P was mostly stilted Victorian dialogue and the AMC hit stemmed from an already visual source material.
Could anyone be trusted to write the series other than Gaiman? Confirmation that he would be shepherding the show from beginning to end would be comforting, but maybe some screen adaptation is better than none at all (though if anyone remembers the BBC's Neverwhere, perhaps not.)
So give me your thoughts guys. Will it be done right? Can it be done right? And is HBO the best venue for it to happen on?