David Slade Is Part Of The American Gods TV Team

We might be mourning the passing of the stylish, ghoulish occasionally crazy Hannibal TV series, but there’s good news if you were fans of the smart, dark look of the show. Director David Slade, the man partly responsible for that quality, is joining old collaborator Bryan Fuller on the TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

Naturally, Slade and Fuller will be crafting an entirely new palette for Gods, but if it’s anything close as impressive as what Hannibal managed on American network TV, imagine the possibilities for this new project on cable channel Starz.

Gaiman's novel, first published in 2001, and again in an expanded edition in 2005, involves old gods and mythological creatures from various Old World pantheons (Low Key Lyesmith, Mr. Nancy, Mr. Jacquel), brought to the US by the immigrants who founded it. But their powers are waning as people's beliefs shift to modern worships like media and technology. When our hero, Shadow, is released from prison, he takes up with the mysterious Mr. Wednesday on an odyssey across America recruiting old gods for a war against the new.

During the journey, Shadow learns some interesting facts about his heritage, and faces down a child-killer. Characters from Sandman crop up occasionally, and the whole thing feels like a tour through forgotten corners of Americana as well as the mythology of, well, the entire world. The novel's companion piece Anansi Boys came out in 2005, and a follow-up story, Monarch Of The Glen, is in Gaiman's Fragile Things collection.

Slade will act as main director and an executive producer on the show alongside Fuller, Michael Green, and Gaiman himself, who likewise welcomed the new member to the team.