Tom Hanks’ Playtone Productions is set to produce “American Gods” for HBO, based on Neil Gaiman’s award-winning novel.

The six seasons are expected to have episodes that range from 10-12 hours long with a budget of $35-40 million per season.

From THR:
The series-in-development, revolving around the question “are you a god if no one believes in you?” is executive produced by Goetzman and Hanks, with Bob Richardson, and Gaiman on board as executive producer and writer.

The series is expected to be effects-heavy in order to ” do justice to the awe-inspiring power of the divine beings.”

“There are some crazy things in there. We’ll probably be doing more effects in there than it’s (sic) been done on a television series,” said Goetzman.

At the earliest, American Gods will premiere sometime in 2013.