Tom Hanks Gives American Gods HBO Series $40 Million Per Season to Work With

An HBO series based on Neil Gaiman‘s American Gods has been in the pipe for a few months now, but today it gets one step closer to reality, and what a reality: Tom Hanks‘ production company Playtone Productions has promised to produce six seasons of the show, with a budget of $40 million per season.

From the A.V. Club:

Playtone is now prepared to produce at least six seasons of the show, with a budget of nearly $40 million per season, all to make room for the effects-heavy renditions of gods both ancient and contemporary—more effects than have been used on a television series before, according to Hanks’ production partner Gary Goetzman.

Six seasons seems like more than enough to cover the range of stories and plot detours in American Gods. Even to, possibly, devote whole episodes to the novel’s periodic flashbacks to various gods’ arrivals on the American continent. The appreciator of literature and stories in me loves the idea of that, if not the television watcher in me. $40 million per season is around 3 million per episode, give or take how many guest stars or special effects are required in a given stretch and the number of episodes in a season; a considerable amount for a television series.

Playtone plans to have American Gods on our screens by 2013, so I’ll cross my fingers that by then HBO will have worked out some way for people to legally and timely watch their shows if they don’t have a premium cable connection by then. In conclusion: there will be an American Gods television series.

May the casting wishes begin! One of the most exciting things about the series is probably Neil Gaiman’s confirmed stance on keeping the racial diversity of his stories in adaptation… or there’ll be no adaptation at all. American Gods will necessarily involve many actors of many different colors and backgrounds, compared to many of its contemporaries, and features a biracial man as its protagonist. Oh, and if you’ve never read American Gods, you should probably steer clear of the comments. There are spoilers just in the names of characters.

(via the A.V. Club.)