American Gods Season 2 Sounds Like a Disaster

Your workplace may be dysfunctional, but at least you don't work on American Gods. The Hollywood Reporter has an extensive breakdown of everything that's reportedly going wrong behind the scenes on Season 2 of the Fremantle-produced Starz drama, and reading it you get the sense that the production is cursed. There's showrunner turnover, conflicting creative visions, ballooning budgets, scripts so bad the actors are rewriting them on set, screaming matches and a studio that mostly produces reality shows in over its head.

American Gods sounds like it's never been smooth sailing, but things really fell apart after co-showrunners Michael Green and Bryan Fuller were fired last year over clashes with studio Fremantle and executive producer Neil Gaiman, who wrote the novel the show is based on and who was reportedly unhappy with the direction Green and Fuller were taking. They were replaced by Jesse Alexander, Gaiman's choice, but now Alexander has reportedly been "sidelined," which means "fired in all but name," probably with Gaiman's blessing. Alexander is not working on the show, but as THR puts it, "Fremantle, the show's studio, would rather exile Alexander than endure the negative attention that would come with dismissing a second showrunner in two seasons."

American Gods: It's Going to Be a While Before We Get Season 2

The whole report is full of wild details like actor Orlando Jones doing so much on-set rewriting that he had to be given a writing credit to avoid violating guild rules and presents the frightening prospect of getting screamed at by Ian McShane. If you're fascinated by Hollywood drama, it's a highly recommended read.

Starz and Fremantle both say that fans will get a first look at Season 2 at New York Comic-Con next month, but we'll see. The production is currently six weeks behind and actors reportedly haven't even received a script for the finale because Alexander is allegedly working on a seventh draft. Yes, seventh.

American Gods Season 2 is supposedly still coming in 2019, two years after Season 1, but at this point we'll just wait and see.