In the seven months since sexual assault allegations against novelist Neil Gaiman surfaced, Gaiman has largely retreated from the public eye. During that time, there have been a variety of developments around the many TV and film adaptations based on his books.
Since the publication of a recent 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’ history of canceling projects from creators facing similar allegations, the allegations have led fans to speculate about the state of Gaiman’s projects. Gaiman’s involvement with his movies and shows varies: Some are merely based on his books, while with others, he’s taken a personal role as a producer or showrunner. Here’s the status of all of the TV series and films based on Gaiman’s work.
As of this reporting, the series based on Gaiman’s 2005 novel Anansi Boys is still set to be released on Prime Video in 2025. Gaiman served as showrunner and executive producer on the series, and wrote the season’s first and last episodes. While the show has reportedly been in post-production for a few years now, Prime Video hasn’t yet announced a release date.
The Netflix show was canceled at the end of August 2024 after an initial season that premiered in April. In the announcement, Netflix didn’t acknowledge whether the move was made in light of the initial wave of sexual-assault allegations. Variety’s initial reporting instead highlighted the comparatively weak streaming numbers for the show, based on characters introduced in Gaiman’s comics series The Sandman, then picked up by many other comics creators.
Good Omens season 3 will tie up the series’ story with a single 90-minute episode, expected to begin filming early in 2025.
Production on the show’s third season halted following the allegations, with Gaiman and his production company eventually stepping back from the show. Although Gaiman contributed to the writing of the show, Prime Video said a new writer would be taking over for him. As of the last report on the show in October 2024, no writer had been officially announced. Polygon has reached out to Amazon for comment.
Disney indefinitely paused its adaptation of Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book in Sept. 2024, per a report from IndieWire. According to the outlet, the film “has not been scrapped but multiple factors, including the allegations, contributed to putting it on hold.”
Though The Sandman season 2 will still release in 2025, Netflix announced at the end of January that it will be the last season. Per sources quoted in the Variety story that broke the news, the decision was largely made independent of the allegations against Gaiman.
“‘The Sandman’ series has always been focused exclusively on Dream’s story, and back in 2022, when we looked at the remaining Dream material from the comics, we knew we only had enough story for one more season,” showrunner Allan Heinberg told Variety. “We are extremely grateful to Netflix for bringing the team all back together and giving us the time and resources to make a faithful adaptation in a way that we hope will surprise and delight the comics’ loyal readers as well as fans of our show.”
While it’s unclear how creatively involved Gaiman was in the second season, he was not involved with any of the promotion for the show around Netflix’s Geeked Week.
Beyond just the film and TV projects of Gaiman’s, several other projects he was involved in were either scuttled or had collaborators who took pains to distance themselves from Gaiman. A Broadway musical based on Coraline (first a book and later a 2009 stop-motion film) was canceled in light of the allegations. Dark Horse Comics (who was publishing a comic adaptation of Anansi Boys) put out a statement on X stating that they would “no longer publish his works.”
Additionally, Marvel said it had no plans to publish Miracleman: The Dark Age, with co-creator Mark Buckingham reportedly having asked to be reassigned off the project in summer 2024. Terry Pratchett’s estate has also removed Gaiman from a Kickstarter campaign to adapt Good Omens as a graphic novel; Gaiman will no longer receive proceeds from the graphic novel, and the estate (which runs the Kickstarter) has offered refunds to anyone who would no longer like to support the graphic novel.
