Neil Gaiman's American Gods picked up by Starz for TV series adaptation

Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is being adapted into a television series by Starz, the premium US cable network announced on Tuesday.

HBO was developing a project based on the award-winning series until November of last year, when the project changed hands to FremantleMedia in February. Gaiman said at the time of the announcement “that it already looks like it's going to be a smoother run developing it than it had at HBO, so I am very pleased."

Starz gave the project a script to series development and said it will create a series that honors the book.

The showrunners are Bryan Fuller, of Hannibal and Pushing Daisies, and Michael Green, of The River and Heroes, who are also writing the pilot.

"Neil Gaiman has created the holiest of holy toy boxes with American Gods and filled it with all manner of magical thing, born of new gods and old,” Fuller said in a statement. “Michael Green and I are thrilled to crack this toy box wide open and unleash the fantastical titans of heaven and earth and Neil's vividly prolific imagination."

The series follows ex-con Shadow in modern-day United States as a war brews between old and new gods.

"When you create something like American Gods, which attracts fans and obsessives and people who tattoo quotes from it on themselves or each other, and who all, tattooed or not, just care about it deeply, it's really important to pick your team carefully: you don't want to let the fans down, or the people who care and have been casting it online since the dawn of recorded history,” Gaiman said in a statement. “What I love most about the team who I trust to take it out to the world, is that they are the same kind of fanatics that American Gods has attracted since the start.”

Gaiman’s Anansi Boys is also in early-development to become a BBC mini-series.