Remember when
news broke that Neil Gaiman's celebrated
American Gods novel was set for a live-action adaptation at HBO? Gaiman even went so far as to say that
he was writing a sequel so that there would be enough material for multiple seasons. Well fastforward roughly a year later, it appears that the project is actually not moving forward. Said HBO's Head of Programming MIchael Lombardo,"
I think we're all huge fans of the book, and I think the script just didn't — we couldn't craft the script as good as we needed it to be. I think we knew going in that it would be a challenge; every good book is a challenge to adapt it and find the level you need for it. The bar is high now for great dramas. And to find that bar — we tried. So it was a huge disappointment […] We tried three different writers, we put a lot of effort into it. Some things just don't happen. We have to trust at the end of the day, if you don't have a star with a great script, you're just not going to go through with it. Even though we love the book, we love the idea, we love the hope of what it could be, we just couldn't get it right."
That's unfortunate, as I know Gaiman's faithful (and large) following were greatly anticipating seeing Shadow's tale unfold on a high quality network like HBO. Still, I susppouse the silver lining here is that we know that Lombardo and HBO are not going to move forward on a project, no matter how beloved, if they don't feel like it will be up to the network's standards.
Source: Vulture via JoBlo