‘American Gods’ showrunners Bryan Fuller, Michael Green exit

Bryan Fuller and Michael Green are exiting their posts as showrunners on Starz drama “American Gods.”

Creators and executive producers on the series, Fuller and Green are said to be departing after clashing with producer FremantleMedia over budget and creative direction. Fuller and Green were said to have been pushing for an increase to the series’ budget for season two. Sources close to the production said that the per-episode budget for “American Gods” season two already nearly $10 million.

No replacement showrunner has yet been named

Green and Fuller both have multiple irons in the fire elsewhere. Green is shepherding the Netflix drama “Raising Dion” and another TV series project in the works. Bryan Fuller is working on Apple’s “Amazing Stories” as well as other projects.

After hitting an impasse on plans for season two, Fuller and Green opted to bow out. The decision comes a year after Fuller exited his role as showrunner on CBS’ “Star Trek: Discovery” amid multiple production delays.

Based on the supernatural novel by Neil Gaiman, “American Gods,” tells the story of a conflict between new and old mythological figured. The series stars Ricky Whittle as Shadow Moon, an ex-con who finds himself in a tug-of-war between America’s old gods — the ones brought here via millennia of immigration, like Ian McShane’s “Mr. Wednesday” (Odin) and Orlando Jones’ “Mr. Nancy” (Anansi) — and the new gods, like Gillian Anderson’s Media.

“American Gods” was renewed by Starz for a second season in May. In addition to Fuller and Green, Craig Cegielski and Stefanie Berk are also executive producers along with David Slade, Adam Kane, and Gaiman. Starz senior vice presidents of original programming Marta Fernandez and Ken Segna are the executives in charge.

In her review of the first season for Variety, critic Sonia Saraiya wrote, “[‘American Gods’] is a sprawling, beautiful show that is fascinating, brilliantly executed, and rather hard to follow. There’s a narrator who never is introduced, a series of gods who do not take the trouble to introduce themselves, and a sense of electric possibility in a landscape that is otherwise dull beyond belief. It’s not just Shadow that is unmoored, it’s the audience, too: Like the feverish terror of a bad dream, the show presents a disorienting, portentous landscape — with absolutely no instructions whatsoever.”

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