Posted in: Netflix, TV | Tagged: The Sandman

The Sandman: Heinberg on Season 3, "Dead Boy Detectives," Backlash

The Sandman series co-creator Allan Heinberg on Season 3 hopes, not involving "Dead Boy Detectives," the backlash the series faced, and more.

Though we still have the upcoming bonus episode adaptation of "Death: The High Cost of Living" to look forward to, Allan Heinberg and David S. Goyer's Tom Sturridge (Dream) and Kirby Howell-Baptiste (Death)-starring live-action adaptation of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman has officially come to an end. Over the course of two series finale interviews, Heinberg had some interesting insights about what could've been with the series (yes, he had some Season 3 thoughts), why the spinoff series Dead Boy Detectives wasn't incorporated into the final season, and if the allegations against Gaiman impacted how he looks back on the series production.

Heinberg on If He Would Return to Expand "The Sandman" Universe: "I am leaving this job reluctantly. I've never had a job where every episode is like a little movie, and you get to write about the most important things in a human life — and not just a human life, but gods' lives. No comic book property I've ever encountered goes as deep or as wide as Sandman. It's not an inexpensive show to make. And if we had a viewership that really demanded it and it made financial sense for Netflix, I could happily go on writing Sandman forever because you can write about anything. You can tell any kind of story in any genre, and you can do it intelligently, elegantly and passionately. It has been literally a dream job for me, but it was a blessing to be able to bring Dream's story to a close and then hint at what the future could be if the numbers were there."

"Dead Boy Detectives" Was Never in "The Sandman" Season 2 Plans: "No. Dead Boys was a show that was developed and shot independently, and then it became part of Netflix. When Netflix took it [from HBO Max], they wanted to make it more integral to the Sandman world, and we did what we could. But because we had already broken our season without any of those characters, it didn't really make sense to bring them in. So if we had time to write to it, I'm sure we could have done that. But the way that it all timed out made it very, very difficult to bring in the Dead Boys in a meaningful way that worked."

Have the Allegations Against Neil Gaiman Changed How Heinberg Reflects on the Series? "It hasn't changed the show for me, or the experience of the show. I would love for as many people to watch this show as possible. I would love for there to be no impediment of any kind to people having access to this show or wanting to experience this show because of all the beautiful work that went into it by hundreds of people who have loved this property for decades since it came out. So any impediment to it getting a wider viewership, or having the experience of watching it be skewed by allegations that are merely allegations — that is sad and unfortunate, but also beyond my control. We just tried to make as beautiful and as moving and as human a show as we possibly could, and I hope that the interest in the show will outlive whatever impact the allegations are having on the viewing public."

Jacob Anderson Was Cast as Daniel/Dream with an Eye on Season 3: During his interview, Heinberg noted that one reason Jacob Anderson (AMC's Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, BBC & Disney+'s Doctor Who, HBO's Game of Thrones) was selected to be Daniel, the new Dream, was the hope that another season could happen. "I also will be honest with you and say I was hoping that– not hoping, but if the numbers were big enough, I was like, 'Well, I certainly want to cast an actor with whom I would want to make Season 3 in that role. So he has to be a star. He has to be somebody that the audience is going to want to follow if we were to have a Season 3."

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