FremantleMedia has announced a significant step forward in the adaptation of Neil Gaiman's American Gods television adaptation. Starz will develop the series, hiring Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies & Hannibal) and Michael Green (Heroes) as showrunners. The duo will also write the pilot and serve as executive producers alongside Gaiman.

"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 via press release. "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. I haven't actually checked Bryan Fuller or Michael Green for quote tattoos, but I would not be surprised if they have them. The people at Fremantle are the kinds of people who have copies of ‘American Gods in the bottom of their backpacks after going around the world, and who press them on their friends. And the team at Starz have been quite certain that they wanted to give Shadow, Wednesday and Laura a home since they first heard that the book was out there.I can't wait to see what they do to bring the story to the widest possible audience able to cope with it."

"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. "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."

FremantleMedia North America, known for its production of reality television programs like American Idol as well as scripted series The Tomorrow People on The CW, picked up the rights to American Gods in February. A television adaptation of the novel was actually in development at HBO until November 2013, when Gaiman revealed the series had changed hands.