American Gods renewed for third season with new showrunner
American Gods has just started its second season, and Starz has officially announced the show based on author Neil Gaiman’s book of the same name, has been renewed for a third season. Entertainment Weekly is also reporting that a new showrunner will take the helm for season 3, meaning the new sheriff in town, Charles “Chic” Eglee (The Shield, Dexter), will be the show’s third showrunner in as many seasons.
“Audiences continue to worship at the altar of American Gods and we are excited to be able to announce to all the true believers that there is more of this fantastical series to come,” stated Carmi Zlotnik, president of programming for Starz. “With Chic at the helm, the invaluable insight and contributions of Neil Gaiman and the undeniable talent of this dedicated cast and crew, we know that the show will continue to deliver on the vision and promise laid out in the novel.”
The trouble surrounding the production of season 2 was well documented, with then showrunner Jesse Alexander getting the boot after reports of the show’s production company Fremantle not getting along with the suits at Starz, final scripts not getting approved after multiple submissions, and actors even writing their own lines. It was a mess.
Still, the season 2 premiere was very popular with fans, earning a 90% fresh score from Rotten Tomatoes, despite a 55% rotten score from critics. But hey, what do critics know? Apparently, not a whole lot, because as EW notes, Starz said the first episode of season 2 was the second-highest rated original series of this year.
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Gaiman, who serves as an executive producer on the show, says the wait for season 3 shouldn’t be as long as the wait for season 2 was. “The problem that we had with season 2 was not all of the personal weirdness,” he said. “The big problem was Starz delayed [the renewal] until they found out how people liked American Gods before they committed to a second series and it takes a certain amount of time to start a writers room — you have to get it together and so forth.”
"What I’m hoping is it’s less about how long it’s going to take season 3 than getting a season 4 [renewal] once season 3 is underway so we can keep the writer’s room on and get the scripts written."
Gaiman went on to sing the new showrunner’s praises, saying he and Eglee have already “been working for weeks now on the shape of the [third] season.” That’s a good sign, especially if season 2 continues to be as good as its premiere episode, fans won’t want to wait two more years for the show to return. American Gods airs Sunday nights on Starz.
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