Neil Gaiman’s American Gods Next Thing HBO Implies They’ll Make Into a Show But Probably Won’t

?From The Hollywood Reporter:

Tom Hanks‘ Playtone Productions is set to produce an open-ended series, American Gods, for HBO, based on Neil Gaiman‘s award-winning novel, while the company’s next project, Major Matt Mason, is in talks with Robert Zemeckis to direct in 3D, Playtone partner Gary Goetzman told The Hollywood Reporter.

The series-in-development, revolving around the question “are you a god
if no one believes in you?” is executive produced by Goetzman and
Hanks, with Bob Richardson, and Gaiman on board as executive producer and writer.

Now slated for six seasons, each season will be of 10-12, hour-long
episodes with a budget of around $35-40 million per season, targeted to
debut on the cable powerhouse in 2013 at the earliest.

Feel free to get excited, but after so many rumored/suggested/potential nerd series that HBO has been interested in and even verbally agreed to, I remain skeptical this will ever get made, Game of Thrones aside. Of course, I might be biased because HBO was also considering a Sandman series from Gaiman at one point, and you can see where that’s gotten us. At the very least, this “announcement” of a 6-season show has prompted one good thing that will probably actually happen — Gaiman says he needs to start working on American Gods 2 immediately.