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‘The Graveyard Book’ and ‘Dead Boy Detectives’ Got Canceled while ‘Good Omens’ is Suspended (Yes, This is A Neil Gaiman Continuation)
Complicity and media adaptations.
When I started drafting this article, the concept of Neil Gaiman’s projects getting canceled was more hypothetical than the real. The allegations of power imbalances and sexual assault only broke in July 2024. But Amazon has suspended production of Good Omens, and Disney has canceled development of an adaptation of The Graveyard Book. The hypothetical has become real. I definitely didn’t picture this (or the many lovely responses from you dear readers) when posting my thoughts back in August.
In addition, Netflix has canceled Dead Boy Detectives. Based on the one-shot comic issue within Sandman and the DC spinoff miniseries, it is exactly what it sounds like, where two ghost boys open up an agency to solve mysteries. It has a separate continuity from Sandman and separates its origins from the comics’ fourth arc. Note that Neil Gaiman was not a showrunner or even the original comic writer; DC Comics owns the IP and controls the revenue. He served a consultancy role on the show. But it seems he’s had an unwanted impact.
Avoiding Neil Gaiman Content
Meanwhile, two YouTube videos popped up on my feed about analyzing Coraline. Maybe I’ll watch them someday, since I know that logically Laika Animation Studios made the film, having crews of a few hundred people. Also, Coraline came out fifteen years ago, long before any people outside of whisper networks heard the stories.
It’s not a logical reaction to avoid Neil Gaiman-related content now; I know it’s purely emotional. My reaction right now is visceral disgust, wondering how much of it was a lie. I feel like the words that used to comfort me are tainted. Other readers and viewers have expressed the same. So for me right now, viewing any new or old stories are going to activate that response. There is also the question of complicity and harm.
Some discussions have come up in social circles: with all this news, would it be the ethically right thing to cancel all of the shows based on works by Neil Gaiman? Those would be Sandman and Good Omens since production is suspended and…
