Though it has faced some pretty tumultuous behind-the-scenes events with the loss of its showrunners two years in a row, Starz’s American Gods is likely to return for a third season. The news comes from Deadline after the site spoke with someone close to the show’s production.
Though it is far from a certainly yet, Deadline’s source told the, “We didn’t make Season 2 of American Gods not to make a Season 3. It’s a big book.” A search is currently underway for a new showrunner who can bring the third season on time and on budget. Both Starz and FreemantleMedia North America want to avoid the problems the past two seasons have had, most especially though the lengthy two-year gap between the series’ premiere and the upcoming premiere of season 2 on March 10. To that end, a new showrunner must have a “rock solid blueprint in place” before the series is officially renewed.
The series is based on Neil Gaiman’s 2001 novel of the same name. Gaiman took on a much more hands-on role as a showrunner during the second season’s production with former showrunner Jesse Alexander. Gaiman helped the production’s conclusion after Alexander was let go, but whatever role he may have for a third season is up in the air given Gaiman’s busy schedule as an author and producer on Amazon’s Good Omens, another adaptation of his work with Terry Pratchett that stars David Tenant and Michael Sheen.
Starz had envisioned American Gods to last for five to six seasons in order to cover all of Gaiman’s novel. If it is renewed, the third season will cover Shadow Moon’s time in the small town of Lakeside. In this portion of the novel, Shadow hides from the New Gods in a freezing Wisconsin town where evil is lurking, the body count is rising, and the war between the Old Gods and the New Gods is heating up.
American Gods stars Ricky Whittle and Ian McShane as Shadow Moon and Mr. Wednesday. Starring alongside them are Emily Browning, Pablo Schreiber, Crispin Glover, Orlando Jones, Yetide Badaki, Bruce Langley, Mousa Kraish, Omid Abtahi and Demore Barnes. Newcomers for the second season are Kahyun Kim, Devery Jacobs, Sakina Jaffrey and Dean Winters.
When Shadow Moon is released from prison, he meets the mysterious Mr. Wednesday, and a storm begins to brew. Little does Shadow know, this storm will change the course of his entire life. Left adrift by the recent, tragic death of his wife, and suddenly hired as Mr. Wednesday’s bodyguard, Shadow finds himself in the center of a world that he struggles to understand. It’s a world where magic is real, where the Old Gods fear both irrelevance and the growing power of the New Gods, like Technology and Media. Mr. Wednesday seeks to build a coalition of Old Gods to defend their existence in this new America and reclaim some of the influence that they’ve lost. As Shadow travels across the country with Mr. Wednesday, he struggles to accept this new reality and his place in it.
A council at the House on the Rock explodes into chaos, sending deities both Old and New on quests across America that will converge on Cairo, Illinois: forcing Shadow to carve out a place as a believer in this strange new world of living gods — a dark world where change demands commitment and faith requires terrible sacrifice.
