American Gods - HBO

Television company HBO, producers of some of the most successful TV coming out of America over the past few years, including Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire and The Wire, has announced its plans to turn popular author Neil Gaiman’s book American Gods into a six season series.

The book is about mystical beings, including Gods and fantasy creatures, existing in modern America.

A six-season runs seems a little ambitious: the show is slated for a late 2013 / early 2014 release but so far only has Robert Richardson (cinematographer for The Aviator, Hugo and Django Unchained) attached to direct, but it does show HBO’s (and production company Playtone’s) confidence in the material and the scripts produced by Gaiman and Richardson so far.
 

Six seasons seems like a real promise to the viewer, as well, "this is going to be worth your time, it'll end when it's ready to end and it'll stick around until it does."

The only other instance like this I can think of was FX buying a hundred episodes of "Anger Management" when it was still in the first season, but I'm sure that was motivated in part by sales, triple camera sitcoms sell into syndication much easier and Two And A Half Men is syndicated like crazy, so if you can sell a hundred eps of a Charlie Sheen comedy while the iron's hot, you're swimming it cash.

But there's no comparison in terms of content or quality, THIS is pretty exciting news.