Within the seven months since sexual assault allegations in opposition to novelist Neil Gaiman surfaced, Gaiman has largely retreated from the general public eye. Throughout that point, there have been quite a lot of developments across the many TV and movie variations primarily based on his books.
For the reason that publication of a latest Vulture article about his alleged abuse, Gaiman now faces a lawsuit for sexual abuse and human trafficking, and has been dropped by his agent. Given studios’ historical past of canceling initiatives from creators dealing with comparable allegations, the allegations have led followers to invest concerning the state of Gaiman’s initiatives. Gaiman’s involvement along with his films and reveals varies: Some are merely primarily based on his books, whereas with others, he’s taken a private position as a producer or showrunner. Right here’s the standing of the entire TV collection and movies primarily based on Gaiman’s work.
As of this reporting, the collection primarily based on Gaiman’s 2005 novel Anansi Boys remains to be set to be launched on Prime Video in 2025. Gaiman served as showrunner and government producer on the collection, and wrote the season’s first and final episodes. Whereas the present has reportedly been in post-production for a couple of years now, Prime Video hasn’t but introduced a launch date.
The Netflix present was canceled at the tip of August 2024 after an preliminary season that premiered in April. Within the announcement, Netflix didn’t acknowledge whether or not the transfer was made in mild of the preliminary wave of sexual-assault allegations. Selection’s preliminary reporting as a substitute highlighted the comparatively weak streaming numbers for the present, primarily based on characters launched in Gaiman’s comics collection The Sandman, then picked up by many different comics creators.
Good Omens season 3 will tie up the collection’ story with a single 90-minute episode, anticipated to start filming early in 2025.
Manufacturing on the present’s third season halted following the allegations, with Gaiman and his manufacturing firm ultimately stepping again from the present. Though Gaiman contributed to the writing of the present, Prime Video stated a brand new author could be taking up for him. As of the final report on the present in October 2024, no author had been formally introduced. Polygon has reached out to Amazon for remark.
Disney indefinitely paused its adaptation of Gaiman’s The Graveyard E-book in Sept. 2024, per a report from IndieWire. In keeping with the outlet, the movie “has not been scrapped however a number of components, together with the allegations, contributed to placing it on maintain.”
Although The Sandman season 2 will nonetheless launch in 2025, Netflix introduced on the finish of January that will probably be the final season. Per sources quoted within the Selection story that broke the information, the choice was largely made impartial of the allegations in opposition to Gaiman.
“‘The Sandman’ collection has at all times been targeted solely on Dream’s story, and again in 2022, after we seemed on the remaining Dream materials from the comics, we knew we solely had sufficient story for yet one more season,” showrunner Allan Heinberg instructed Selection. “We’re extraordinarily grateful to Netflix for bringing the workforce all again collectively and giving us the time and sources to make a trustworthy adaptation in a means that we hope will shock and delight the comics’ loyal readers in addition to followers of our present.”
Whereas it’s unclear how creatively concerned Gaiman was within the second season, he was not concerned with any of the promotion for the present round Netflix’s Geeked Week.
Past simply the movie and TV initiatives of Gaiman’s, a number of different initiatives he was concerned in had been both scuttled or had collaborators who took pains to distance themselves from Gaiman. A Broadway musical primarily based on Coraline (first a ebook and later a 2009 stop-motion movie) was canceled in mild of the allegations. Darkish Horse Comics (who was publishing a comic book adaptation of Anansi Boys) put out an announcement on X stating that they’d “now not publish his works.”
Moreover, Marvel stated it had no plans to publish Miracleman: The Darkish Age, with co-creator Mark Buckingham reportedly having requested to be reassigned off the mission in summer time 2024. Terry Pratchett’s property has additionally eliminated Gaiman from a Kickstarter marketing campaign to adapt Good Omens as a graphic novel; Gaiman will now not obtain proceeds from the graphic novel, and the property (which runs the Kickstarter) has supplied refunds to anybody who would now not wish to help the graphic novel.