American Gods by Neil Gaiman is being adapted for Starz, with Ricky Whittle in the lead role. But actor Sean Harris, set to play Mad Sweeney, just left the project.
Neil Gaiman’s popular novel American Gods tracks one man, Shadow, as he travels across North America and encounters a slew of ancient gods along the way.
The 100‘s Ricky Whittle will play Shadow, with Ian McShane playing his mysterious mentor Mr. Wednesday. The Bryan Fuller miniseries is highly anticipated by fans of Neil Gaiman, who are understandably thrilled that this fantastic story will be expanded over a 10-episode series — it’d be a crime to try to condense this rich story into one feature-length movie.
But recently, the Starz series has faced two potential setbacks, as both British actor Sean Harris (Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation) and Director of Photography Brendan Glavin have departed the series.
According to Deadline, Sean Harris’ exit was due to “personal reasons.”
As filming began a few weeks ago, and some of Mad Sweeney (the Irish leprechaun whose coin tricks prove most helpful to Shadow on his journey)’s scenes had already been filmed, Fuller will now have to complete a number of reshoots when a replacement actor has been found.
Then there’s D.P. Brendan Glavin, who will be replaced by The Hunger Games series’ Jo Willems. Deadline speculates that this change was made because of tensions between Glavin and director David Slate, which allegedly caused production delays.
Says FreemantleMedia Media North America in a statement, “We are thrilled to welcome Jo Willems as our DP. Jo and David Slade have had a long-standing creative partnership and have collaborated on various projects. The chemistry between a director and his DP are vital and when Jo became available to join David on American Gods, we jumped at the opportunity to have him on the team.”
American Gods is set for a 2017 release. Emily Browning stars as Shadow Moon’s wife Laura, Yetide Badaki is Bilquis, Peter Stormare is Czernobog, and Cloris Leachman is Zorya Vechernyaya.
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