American Gods is one of Neil Gaiman’s most ambitious and praised novels. However, very much like his graphic novel series The Sandman, interpreting it to screen is not an easy task, and that proved to be the case when American Gods was canceled after three seasons without completing the story it had to tell. In an interview with Screen Rant, actor Crispin Glover, who played Mr. World in the series, said that making the show was challenging due to the three seasons having different showrunners. When asked whether he believed the story of American Gods would ever be completed on screen, Glover said:
“I would love to. There were three different seasons of it, each season had a different showrunner, which, of course, that is a bit confusing, because the showrunner, is going to have a very individualized [approach to how] they write, or are in charge of the writing team. So, they're going to have a very individualized take, and that's going to affect very greatly what the character is going to be like.
“We had three seasons, the original showrunners, Bryan Fuller and Michael Green, who were great, and I loved their writing, and their ideas and everything. What I was understood, what they said to me, was that it would be three seasons for the whole book, and I was expecting within three years that we would have done this kind of slow motion, interpretation of the book from Bryan Fuller and Michael Green. Then, unfortunately, that didn't continue. All the writers they brought in were good, I didn't have an issue with any writers at all, but just by the nature of having different people interpolating the subject matter.”
Did Having Multiple Showrunners Kill American Gods?
The recent boom in streaming platforms has become a blessing and curse for many novel-to-screen adaptations. While the rise in platforms such as Disney+, HBO Max, Prime Video, and Netflix has meant that more adaptations can find a home with long-form storytelling than ever, that lends itself to the tendency for a series to want to force as many seasons out of the source material as possible.
While some limited series, such as the Stephen King adaptation of The Outsider has stayed faithful to the original story, others have strayed in new directions, sometimes for the better but mostly for the worse. Another King adaptation, Under The Dome, told pretty much the novel's story in one season but stretched out a threadbare narrative over another two seasons before it reached a second-rate conclusion.
American Gods ran into similar troubles, spending its first season building a credible, mostly faithful adaptation of Gaiman’s work before deviating enough to see audiences lose interest. Having a steady stream of new showrunners, with their own ideas and stamp put on the material, also didn’t help the series be cohesive and consistent and ultimately led to the cancelation of the series before it could conclude on its own terms. If the series had stuck to simply adapting the novel as is, with its original showrunners, then there is every likelihood that Crispin Glover would have been able to have his wish of completing his character’s story more satisfactorily.