HBO wins the Game of Thrones and takes on American Gods

15 June 2011

Gerard Wood

Nine episodes into HBO’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones and the timing could hardly be better for an announcement about HBO’s plans to adapt Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

HBO’s Game of Thrones is a watershed in the adaptation of genre fiction. It’s a game-changer. Or at least, it should be. This is seriously good television: a sophisticated adaptation of a complex, sprawling and intelligent work of fantasy for an adult audience. The direction and production are superb, the cast is remarkably strong and the adaptation itself, penned by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, is inspired. HBO has demonstrated once and for all how to handle complex and sophisticated SF and fantasy fiction, in particular those weighty tomes and sprawling series beloved by the SF and fantasy readership. These works of fiction need the luxury of time afforded by a TV series to do them justice, and anything less risks being little more than a hack job.

Peter Jackson led the way with his treatment of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, but even with the space of three relatively long movies to work with Jackson made dramatic and occasionally detrimental changes to the narrative (some were creative decisions by the screenwriters, others were brought about by the need to compress Tolkien’s long and sprawling narrative into three movies). Any adaptation of novel to screen involves change, but as HBO’s Game of Thrones has demonstrated admirably, those changes can be interesting rather than detrimental given the latitude of a TV series, talented writers and a respectable budget.

This is how Frank Herbert’s Dune and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion need to be adapted.

And Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

Back in March it was announced that the film rights to this masterpiece of modern fantasy had just been sold and although few details were available Gaiman indicated then that “There is one cinematographer and director on board who has many, many Oscars and is I think a genius, and I love the fact that he fell in love with this about six or seven years ago and has not given up and just kept coming back and kept coming back.”

With a little misdirection from Neil, we’d concluded that American Gods was heading for the big screen, which was a little wide of the mark as we discovered in April when it was revealed that the Oscar winning cinematographer/director (well director of photography) is Robert Richardson ("many, many Oscars" equates to two, for JFK and The Aviator) and that Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman’s Playtone Pictures was backing American Gods for development on HBO.

The most recent announcement reveals that Playtone Pictures is proposing a remarkable six seasons of American Gods for HBO, each with a budget of about US$35-40 million.

In the wake of Game of Thrones the involvement of HBO can only be seen as a good thing, but even so I’m really not sure what to make of this latest announcement. With 10-12 episodes per season, each an hour long, we’re looking at about 60 episodes / hours of television for a novel that runs to about 600 pages: if this represents adaptation of the novel, then it’s exploiting the latitude afforded by TV to a hitherto unheard of extent! To give this some context, Game of Thrones runs to about 800 pages and is well served by ten one hour episodes.

Far more likely what Playtone Pictures is proposing is some kind of series based on the novel, in which case it's reassuring that Gaiman is involved both as an executive producer and as co-writer, with Richardson, of the pilot episode. Goetzman has also indicated that the series will be heavy on effects, "There are some crazy things in there. We'll probably be doing more effects in there than it's been done on a television series".

Published in 2001, American Gods is Gaiman’s second novel and is said to be one of the most highly honoured works of modern fiction having won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Bram Stoker.

With its signature blend of fantasy, horror and mythology, American Gods tells the story of Shadow, an ex-convict who is offered a job as a body guard by the mysterious Mr Wednesday. Together they travel through the American heartland meeting up with a succession of peculiar characters and slowly but surely Shadow understands who his strange employer is and what he is up to. Shadow's employment by Wednesday was no random event and he comes to realise that he has an unimaginable role to play in Wednesday’s plans.

A masterly critique of modern America, the premise of American Gods is that deities exist because people believe in them. The old gods and other mythological beings (from leprechauns to elves) have been brought to the US on waves of belief with immigrants from the old world, but their power has diminished as belief in them has waned. New and increasingly powerful gods have arisen fuelled by a contemporary obsession with media, sex, technology, celebrity and so on, and the scene has been set for a showdown between the old and new gods fighting for dominance. Mr Wednesday, an incarnation of the All-Father Odin, intends to win at any cost.

If all goes well, American Gods will debut on HBO sometime in 2013.

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