The Sandman showrunner Allan Heinberg said on Wednesday that the show was not actually canceled over the sexual misconduct allegations against Neil Gaiman. Netflix announced that this series would end with Season 2 back in January, and at the time, the accusations against Gaiman were just beginning to impact many of his adaptations. However, Heinberg told Entertainment Weekly that the streamer, the studio, and the creative team had decided to end the show shortly before Season 1 even premiered. He said that Season 2 was already in post-production when the reports about Gaiman began to circulate, so he doesn’t think it had any impact on the story or content of the new episodes. Still, he said that the announcement of the show’s ending came at “unfortunate timing, for sure.”
“It was a decision we made three years ago,” Heinberg said of the show’s cancellation. The reason, he explained, was actually the content of the original comic book by Gaiman, Sam Kieth, and Mike Dringenberg. The book often goes off on tangents about other characters, where Dream (Tom Sturridge) is only distantly involved. “There are some volumes where he just appears in two scenes,” Heinberg pointed out.
Beloved as some of these stories are, Heinberg wanted to keep the focus squarely on Dream. He also kept in mind his original pitch for the adaptation, where he told Netflix this would be “a family drama above all,” depicting the strife between Dream and his siblings, the other Endless. We’ll meet the rest of them in Season 2. Looking at the rest of the comic series with a birds’ eye view, he felt that there was only one season’s worth of “hard story” left to go without stretching it.
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As for the shocking allegations against Gaiman, Heinberg felt that they came after Season 2 had wrapped. “I can’t say that it affected our process, which is scheduled years in advance, he said. “These are your delivery dates and you just keep going. So it’s been in the periphery of my experience and the background of my experience, but it hasn’t been part of the world of the making of the show, if that makes sense. Every production is its own little island. Even though we were in London, my experience was very limited to the making of the show, even in my personal life, which I did not have for the last six years.”
Gaiman has always been very direct and interactive with fans on social media over the years, making this case very emotional for many readers. The author was publicly accused of sexual assault by five women in July of 2024. In the following months, Disney halted production on a planned adaptation of Gaiman’s novel The Graveyard Book, and Prime Video paused production on Good Omens Season 3. Another report on the allegations hit in January of this year, just before the cancellation of The Sandman and all of Gaiman’s ongoing work with Dark Horse Comics.
Gaiman himself has denied engaging in any non-consensual sex at any time in his life, though he wrote on his blog that amid all the allegations, here are “moments I half-recognize and moments I don’t.” It’s unclear if any legal action against the author will move forward at the time of this writing.
The Sandman Season 2 will premiere in two parts on Netflix — first on July 3rd, then concluding on July 24th. The first season is streaming there now.
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