A second season of The Sandman is coming to Netflix.
Deadline confirms Netflix has greenlit its adaptation of writer Neil Gaiman's acclaimed DC/Vertigo comic book series for Season 2. This comes after the official DC Comics Twitter account posted a now-deleted tweet prematurely announcing the news, and an inaccurate report that the series had been canceled made its way around social media.
The Sandman's 10-episode first season was released in August and quickly rose through the ranks of the streamer's top 10 list. The series was watched for 69.5 million hours in its first week and brought in a doubly impressive 127.5 million in its second. In its first month, The Sandman recorded more than 300 million hours watched. The adaptation also received decidedly positive reviews, with the first season earning an 87% critics' approval rating and an 80% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Why Did Netflix Take So Long to Renew The Sandman?
The series' seemingly explosive popularity led viewers to believe The Sandman was destined for a quick renewal. As the weeks went by with no word, however, nervous Sandman fans began to rally online, pressuring Netflix to announce a second season. Gaiman himself has been openly vocal about his experience with the streaming service and the series itself, explaining why Netflix didn't jump to renew The Sandman right away. "The data harvesting has only just finished - and is complicated by a lot of people not binge-watching it, but spreading it out, letting episodes sink in before watching the next," Gaiman shared on Sept. 22. "Telling [Netflix] to hurry up won't make decisions happen faster."
Netflix was far from the first studio to attempt a Sandman adaptation. Several producers attempted to bring the series to live action since the 1990s, to no avail. Warner Bros. came close to launching a Sandman film in the mid-2010s when David S. Goyer announced a collaboration between himself, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Gaiman, but Gordon-Levitt dropped out due to creative disagreements with the studio. TV adaptations from Logan director James Mangold and The Boys developer Eric Kripke were also considered in the past but ultimately dismissed. In 2019, Netflix announced a live-action Sandman series would finally come to fruition, with Allan Heinberg as showrunner and Gaiman and Goyer as executive producers.
Season 1 of The Sandman is available to stream on Netflix.
Source: Deadline