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After covering a reported metaphorical “pissing contest” between Warner Bros. Discovery head David Zaslav and Netflix over the latter’s production payment terms that required the series adaptation’s co-writer & executive producer to take to Twitter to reassure fans that Season 2 is “real,” it’s nice to cover something else that’s very real. And it could the very thing we were hoping for if the second season of Neil Gaiman (Good Omens); EP, co-writer & showrunner Allan Heinberg (Wonder Woman), and EP & co-writer David S. Goyer‘s The Sandman became a reality. Speaking with Variety on a number of new & returning series, Netflix’s head of U.S. and Canada scripted series, Peter Friedlander, had a very interesting answer when asked why the second season wasn’t being called a “season.” And that’s because the streamer might be reconsidering “binge dumping” the second season, looking instead potentially drop episodes in batches (like with Stranger Things 4, Ozark, Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, and some others). “Everything is on the table when it comes to ‘Sandman,'” Friedlander offered. “It’s an innovative show.” So could we see the season split into two “acts”? Or would Netflix be bold enough to drop three episodes at the premiere and then go weekly? Or could Netflix make our heads explode and go weekly from the jump? I prefer the second option; seems to have worked really well for Amazon & Showrunner Eric Kripke‘s The Boys. Plus, imagine the viewing community of “Sandman” fans hosting viewing parties, discussions, etc., after each episode! We’re going to start crossing fingers, toes, and various body parts now…
Neil Gaiman on The Sandman Season 2 Gameplan & Beyond
“Well, we told the first 400 pages of a 3,000-page arc in the first 10 episodes. So there’s a kind of a “you do the math” on that. But then the other answer is, how long is a piece of string? What we know that we would like to do, in a perfect world, as long as the audience is there and people come out for it and people want it, is we want to tell the whole story of ‘Sandman’ that went through to ‘The Wake.’ And after that we want to tell ‘Sandman: Overture,’ and somewhere in there, possibly, even as a special or whatever, we’d love to do things like ‘The Dream Hunters.’ We quite probably weave the stories that are in ‘Sandman: Endless Nights’ into the body of the whole. What is nice is we have the entirety of ‘Sandman’ to draw on,” Gaiman explained during an interview with Variety. when asked how much time/seasons would be needed to tell the complete story of “The Sandman” universe.
Gaiman continued, “We also have the ‘Death’ books. It might be great to go off and do one of those as a sideline, in addition to which, anybody who has seen ‘Sandman’ Episode 3 has sidled over to us at some point or other in the last six months and said, ‘Do you think there’s any possibility that we could do a Johanna Constantine show with Jenna Coleman?’ And, oh my God, she’s a star, and you just want to see her going through battling demons and destroying other people’s lives. So that’s in there, too. We can keep going on this for a long time to come. But this isn’t us going, it’s eight seasons exactly and then out — or five seasons and out. We want to tell the story. Which feels wonderfully familiar for me because when I was writing ‘Sandman,’ people go, ‘So how long does ‘Sandman’ go?’ And I’d go, ‘I don’t know, maybe Issue #50?’ And I’d be at Issue #50 and go, ‘I don’t know, Issue #75, maybe?’ But when you get there, there’s still be more story to tell after that.”
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