WTF Wednesdays – HBO Couldn’t Adapt American Gods?

Neil Gaiman is a member of the nerd god pantheon. Though few of the mainstream know him by name, he’s definitely the Nerd Pantheon’s Hermes to Joss Whedon’s Poseidon (who can make a ship sink or sail with very little warning) and George R.R. Martin’s Hades (for he presides over grim shit and dead people). Gaiman is the nerdy trickster, whimsical, on the move, still providing wisdom from on high but mostly just creating things with a flair for batshit and little care for what could be considered normal. Gaiman is to books what Tim Burton is to movies (except he hasn’t overstayed his welcome and doesn’t have a fetish for Depp in white makeup).

Burton’s been doing this to Depp for decades.

So it makes sense that one of Gaiman’s most popular works is a novel talking about the modern interpretation and existence of gods. American Gods is a whimsical little take on modern society and the evolution of culture, with old gods adjusting to the modern society while new gods are born out of concepts such as the internet and television. It was a great premise and obviously ripe for the picking for a television adaptation. And, considering how well they’ve been doing with book adaptations on TV, everyone was kind of hyped when HBO picked it up.

Then HBO lost the option and said they couldn’t make the concept work… WTF?

You Fumble This And Not True Blood?

Back in November 2013 we all found out together that the American Gods HBO adaptation was DOA and that the rights had passed from HBO’s clutches to greener pastures. Considering HBO had been riding high on book adaptations recently (especially the one written by the guy everyone should probably cut some slack), it seemed like this should have been a slam dunk. After all, HBO was already producing something that was tricky to adapt and the fans of that show were likely to be fans of this new thing as well (after all, two of the nerd pantheon existing side by side).

So how exactly do you manage to drop the ball on that one? It wasn’t until almost 8 months later that we find out from an interview with an HBO executive just what happened.

“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.”

So, let me get this straight… you managed to find writers to pick up the reigns of a critically acclaimed ongoing and incomplete book series that may not be finished until 2023. You managed to take that and get writers competent enough to turn giant books into seasons into hour long chunks that can be viewed without breaking the flow or seeming pointless. You managed to get writers competent enough to actually have people say “I trust these guys to make adjustments when necessary”. Hell, you found writers that managed to turn a lesser known vampire franchise into a series lasting… 7 seasons?!

Oh god, Charlaine Harris is dominating me by proximity alone.

If Game of Thrones is written by the writing equivalent of wizards who bend time and space to somehow NOT overtake George Really Rundown Martin then True Blood is written by god damn alchemists for their ability to turn something basic into gold. And I’m not throwing stones from another glass house, I live in that house. True Blood is in my genre, it’s standing on my neck, I look up upon the true face of the beast. It calls itself a mystery but it’s really just lots of fucking!

I mean, let’s be honest here, True Blood wouldn’t have existed without Twilight. I don’t mean the book series – that existed years before Twilight. But all of a sudden after people discovered the fact teenage girls want to fuck Vampires everyone’s gotten a little of that action. And, once again, I’m living in that same glass house, listening to the happy sounds from the next room over and muttering to myself “they’d love me if I were sexy too.” It’s not petty throwing of stones from a distance, I’m just fully aware that the likes of my work and True Blood are operating a little outside that domain HBO has defined.

And I’m also not saying they’re bad books, our genre just isn’t what HBO is talking about when they’re talking about the bar they’ve set. They’re not super heavy, they don’t take 7 books to find resolutions to minor plot threads. You don’t need to read over a million words or watch 4 seasons to keep up to date on our worlds, you just need to pick up the book or turn on the TV and get a little recap. There’s nothing wrong with that and I’m happy to be standing next to (or under) Charlaine Harris in this genre. But it says something about what HBO was really saying and I’ve got a response to you guys.

You’re never going to have another series exactly like Game of Thrones.

I’m sorry, but it had to be said. A lot of the reason why Game of Thrones happens to work is because it IS “different”. A Song of Ice and Fire is written to be as counter to as many tropes as possible and continually manages to burst bubbles. This is novel the first time tried because everyone stops to marvel at how novel it is. But when someone else tries it (and they will), it’s going to look like a cheap attempt to catch lightning in a bottle twice. You are not going to pull that off and you shouldn’t try.

And the stupidest part of this is, if that’s not what you were thinking and trying to do with American Gods then there’s actually a screenwriter out there who could have pulled off a pilot for you with very little problem. He’s adapted plenty of Gaiman’s work, has a great understanding of his style and works well with him. Hell, his screenplays have been well received by the fans of his work and he could probably help you nail down what style you need and what kind of writers you should be looking for. That man’s name is… Neil Gaiman.

Seen here communing with another member of the pantheon

So when you say you can’t find a star with a great script, what you’re really saying is that either your standards have gotten too narrow or your past successes were mostly just dumb luck. Because when you really look hard at what you’ve got already…

Not all of them are high brow.