Neil Gaiman doesn’t sound too optimistic about the pricey Sandman getting another season
He got his helmet, ruby, and bag of sand, but when will Dream get his second season?
Aux News Neil Gaiman
With all of the troubles at HBO Max, it can be easy to forget that it was only a few months ago that Netflix was going through a lean period of its own, which has led to the streaming service cutting back on pricy, riskier endeavors in favor of lowest-common-denominator genre fare that everyone will probably stream at least once (if only out of obligation). This new, more cautious attitude might end up scaring the service off of what could be another smash-hit TV series, though, with Neil Gaiman noting on Twitter that the streamer’s new The Sandman adaptation is going to have to “perform incredibly well” if it’s going to convince Netflix to sign off on another season—and even after two weeks of being the biggest show in the world, “that still may not be enough.”
Gaiman, the writer of the comics that Sandman is based on, explained on Twitter that it’s “a really expensive show” in response to a fan asking why a second season hasn’t been announced, and he also reminded his followers to “encourage all your friends to watch Sandman” and to “encourage all your friends who have begun to watch Sandman but got distracted by life to finish watching Sandman.”
The series is an extremely faithful version of Gaiman’s comics, which is both a good thing (the comics are good!) and a bad thing (the comics are so good already!), and it’s probably the best anyone could’ve hoped for with Netflix and its budgets being what they are. So it makes sense that fans are ready for more, especially with quite a few additional Sandman volumes that have yet to be adapted. That bonus episode released last week was nice, and it covered some fan-favorite stories, but a full second season would sure be nice.
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The streaming system is fucked.
It’s the ‘throw money at everything’ streaming system that gave us this season of Sandman.
It’s the throw money at everything approach that will also insure that this will be yet another one and done netflix show. Throw money desperately at something else.
As someone who remembers what it was like to enjoy a show, watch it get shoved onto a sports-heavy time slot, then unceremoniously dumped to Friday nights, before the network finally stops airing the show, and maybe they’ll dump the final six episodes unannounced on some weird Sunday afternoon block eight months later, I’ll do you one better and say the entertainment industry is fucked.
Is your coat Brown?
a brown coat here! 😀
I understood that reference!
Is your coat Brown?
The thing is, in the old days, a show needed to be successful in its time slot compared to the competition. The more successful it was, the more the channel could ask for advertising spots during that show. It was a relatively simple affair. Be better than whatever else is out there on the other channels at that time. Sure, less successful shows were often moved to the infamous “Friday night death slot” before being cancelled, but I think, overall, the system was a bit “fairer”. Sure, some awesome shows still ended up being canceled, but a lot of other shows were allowed to grow their audiences over multiple seasons.
Now, in the streaming era, all shows are competing at all time with every other show available out there. Which is just insane and makes it incredibly difficult for any show to be determined “successful”.
The result being many incredible shows getting the axe after only one season (two at best). And many stupid low-cost reality shows getting renewed all the time. I find it kind of stupid to think that Netflix, in trying to aim for the lowest common denominator, are essentially turning themselves into the McDonald’s of streaming TV (but trying to sell themselves as a fancy hotel restaurant).
Honestly, the TV coming out now is quite possibly the best that’s ever been made…it’s just really fucking hard to find, is all, between the 239 streaming services out there offering original content.
Considering that the parent company that owns both the IP to The Sandman and the production company (Warner Television) that actually made the show passed on putting it on their own streaming service should tell you how messed up the current streaming system is.
Literally one of the top three non-cinema adaptations of any DC/Vertigo property ever made. If they aren’t picking this one up — why bother making any more at all…?
Better to have adapted it well and been unceremoniously cancelled than to have never been adapted at all, I guess.
I suspect they will. The show did incredibly well. All that Gaiman said was that it’s not a guarantee, which is always true, and a good way to make sure people keep watching.
They certainly aren’t promoting it very hard. I barely found out about the bonus episode 11, since it was released so much later.
That’s on Netflix. Once again, new eps of a show I watched come out … and Netflix does NOTHING to bring it to my attention.
There also seems to be a wall between people who are obsessed with it succeeding insisting it’s the lack of marketing and people like me who wanted to like it but found it boring. Don’t get mad at us if it’s not renewed. Pretty shitty of a creator to drop the first part of a story with no solid plans of continuing it.
That’s practically every single creator of a Netflix show though.
I am just NOW finding out about it, and I am a HUGE Sandman fan.
Exactly.
It’s hard to say it needed more promotion when it was #1 in 80 countries and in the top 10 in another 11 countries. It’s still the #1 show globally.Frankly, I login and the first thing I see is a banner for Sandman New Episodes. It’s very successful. Whether or not they ever really planned to continue because of cost is up for debate, but it was well-received and well-viewed.
💯
Thats a low bar though. And it really bottoms out toward the end (after a great highpoint with episodes 6 and 7). I can imagine the viewer numbers match that pattern.
Didn’t it do really well?
Not well enough perhaps!
Seems like it’s doing pretty, pretty good. https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/netflix-top-10-the-sandman-never-have-i-ever-1235342717/
It was praised by critics, but because Netflix Doesn’t even release numbers of their shows to even the creators, no one knows if it did well or not
Seems like it’s doing pretty, pretty good. https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/netflix-top-10-the-sandman-never-have-i-ever-1235342717/
That’s not true anymore. As of 8/18/2022 Netflix said Sandman accumulated 198.98 million hours viewed since it’s 8/5 release. It appeared on Netflix’s top 10 in 98 countries.
Critics everywhere but here, I seem to recall the AVClub review being “Meh, its okay”The wife and I have watched the first two episodes and are enjoying it.
Saw something from an independent analyst that said it had somewhere around 120 million hours of viewing, so it’s kinda curious to see if it matters how good something does if it’s expensive. From a suit’s point of view, it’s the profit margin more than the profit, and since you can’t track interest->subscribers relationships all that well, it just take s a “gut feeling” from an exec to replace everything with Storage Wars Extended Universe content.
In theory. Just depends on how much of the audience carried through to the end. Too big of a drop off and it goes the way of Cowboy Bepop.
I quit halfway through…too boring
Thanks for the reminder of CB. I actually liked how they expanded upon the original anime (in most cases) and was so, so hoping that it was gonna get at least a second series. I thought the casting was spot on, especially Jet. I’m definitely overdue for a re-watch of both the anime and Netflix adaptation. As far as Sandman goes, I completely forgot that it was finally out, but again, thanks Netflix. I had it in my que since you announced it but oddly, no notifications that it’s been around for two weeks (work has been busy, but still…). Just keep on promoting the teeny-bopper YA coming of age crap at me and ignore what I’m actually looking for. Whatever your algorithm was doing right in 2016 isn’t working so right for me in 2022.
Ah, but did it sufficiently please our lord and savior the Algorithm? Who tf even knows?
I thought Lebron, his fake son, and the Looney Tunes defeated the Al G Rhythm. Does that mean Bugs Bunny died and then came back to life in vain?
Doing well in the first two weeks is one thing. The question is, does it have legs? It’s been two months since Stranger Things’ fifth season premiered, but it’s coming in at sixth in the top ten. Where will Sandman be in a month?
It’s almost as if the “all on one day” binge model isn’t as stable anymore! Call me crazy but I have this idea in my head that if Stranger Things was weekly releases it would have stayed in the mainstream conversation longer.
Sorta kinda. Cheaper things did better and Netflix cares about full runthroughs as well as total hours watched when choosing to greenlight more seasons. It didn’t do terribly, but another Stranger Things this is not.
It might have done very well indeed, but in a world where Tiger King was a national sensation, perhaps it’s not good enough for media to perform very well when you can just film some meth heads going at it for $100 a day and get millions of views off that.
Ah, the Zaslav approach.
Dan Murrell does some engagement analysis based on the numbers that Netflix releases and based on his metrics, which are admittedly limited, Sandman had a pretty steep drop-off in viewer engagement and finished season watches in its second week.
yeah cuz it looks fascinating but the first two episodes are total niche slogs.
Netflix doesnt care. They only think about it in terms of will it increase/keep subscribers. Which idk how they determine it, but just it doing great might not cut it.
It’s dominated for a few weeks, but it seems it needs to go months to get the kind of return Netflix is expecting.
It can do really well and still have a high enough production cost not to be worthwhile…especially in light of Netflix’s continuing subscriber losses
as per the article, 197 million hours. BUT, with Netflix being so secretive about their usual numbers, hard to say whether that is “ENORMOUS” or “EH, the low end of what was expected”.But the series was beautiful and well-acted, I really hope they give it a 2nd season.
As far as we know, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance did really well, and certainly was well-received, but only got one season. Netflix has a reputation for axing shows unexpectedly and/or in their prime (I still haven’t forgiven them for GLOW).
Read the story, Marty! (Also, RIP.)
Probably did really well to anyone familiar with the story. Most folks like me didnt read the comic, and were too bored by the middle of episode 2. I’ll continue it when I have trouble sleeping.
Who freakin’ knows? Streaming companies keep all that stuff so close to the vest that it’s almost impossible to define ‘successful’. Of course, Netflix has been so poorly run for so long that ‘do really well’ probably means “did 10 million new subscribers sign up to watch it?”The answer seems so obvious with ‘weekly’ releases instead of the all-at-once dump that I’m genuinely surprised they didn’t do that two years ago when D+ launched. I personally gave a day between episodes of this show so that I would retain some of it.I would hope they renew this show, as it was incredibly high-quality, and the battle of ‘streamers’ is going to come down to high-quality programming and price, not ‘amount of content’ like Netflix seemed to believe for so long. They’ve basically been the equivalent of that shiny, new Blockbuster store that had 20,000 titles, but were out of new releases and you’d never heard of any of the shit they had in stock, so you go home empty handed and watch something on cable since ‘they were out of everything’.
Netflix isn’t happy with anything unless it gets better viewer numbers than Squid Game or Stranger Things, which is impossible unless you’re the next season of Squid Game or Stranger Things.
I mean he’s probably gonna say whatever he thinks will increase viewership; he’s not gonna be like “Nah, don’t watch it, it’ll be fine.”
Asolutely. I saw his tweets before I saw this story, and my takeaway was “He’s not counting his chickens before they’re hatched and wants to push as many people towards watching the show as possible” as opposed to “He doesn’t think it’s going to get picked up.” He said in a previous tweet that they weren’t going to make a decision until after a month and it was in the show’s best interest to be popular for that whole month.
You know what….fair enough. I love the comics, liked the adaptation, and at the end of the day it’s Netflix’s dollar. If they think they aren’t getting their money’s worth, that’s for them to decide (although given how much control Gaiman had over the project and how ruthless Netflix is, I’m a little surprised that he didn’t demand a guaranteed second season).After all, a second season isn’t always a good thing. Gaiman’s other recent adaptation, American Gods, never really hit the heights of the first season (looking at you, Jesus Party).
didn’t Bryan Fuller and Neil Gaiman both bail after the first season?
Bryan Fuller got axed, and the show was shuffling showrunners after that. Neil Gaiman wasn’t as involved in that show as with The Sandman, for some adaptations he tends to sit back and let the people hired to adapt do their jobs, but there was some contention there where Neil wasn’t happy with some decisions.
Fuller didn’t get axed, he left the show because he didn’t like feel Starz was giving him enough of a budget and several of his friends went with him. So yeah, it’s a lesson in what could go wrong if you hold out for a higher budget because American Gods went from one of the most visually stunning and imaginative shows ever filmed to a slog.
Fuller was asking for so much money there was no way that the show made any economic sense, and when Starz gave it to him, he asked for even more the next season. Fuller’s ego, and the attempt to make a nice tight story into a seven season ongoing series, was what killed it. Waaaaay too much greed.
I think you are confusing the show’s budget with Fuller’s pay, and possibly misattributing the greed somewhat.
Sorry, that wasn’t clear, I was talking about the budget for the show, not his individual pay.
This is so not accurate, Fremantle was behind American Gods and had very little experience producing a big budget show like American Gods and had actual problems with their willingness to finance the effects needed to bring it to life. Everything that went wrong with American Gods is traceable to Fremantle’s inexperience and lack of willingness to treat the fantasy epic as a fantasy epic.
Gaiman said in an interview recently that the showrunners for Ametican Gods solicited his feedbacl then ignored most of it. That’s why he insisted on being the ultimate authority for Sandman
Fuller yes Gaiman no
Gaiman did not bail. If anything, there was some concern after Fuller left that he was too involved.
I’ve really enjoyed it and certainly hope there will be more, especially to see the rest of Dream’s arc with storylines like Season of Mist, A Game of You, Brief Lives and the Kindly Ones.
a live action Season of Mists is all I want really. especially with all the seeds they planted for it in s1 it would be a shame not to follow through
Right? The first two stories were great for introductions and table-setting, but the series gets infinitely better as it moves along. Though they did manage to rather fantastically merge my two-favorite ‘stand-alone’ stories into one episode, so I’ll be okay if it doesn’t get past this…but man this first season was so well done I’m champing at the bit to see “A Game of You” now.
Same here! I fully agree with you.
Didn’t they report it got watched for over 120m hours in its first week? How much more viewership does a show need to get renewed?
The initial hit is the first benchmark it has to pass (and has), next benchmark will be essentially “who watched it to the end” within the first 30 days. The more the better the chance it will get picked up. It does make you wonder how much that goalpost moves with Netflix’s stock price.
That’s what 12 million viewers if you assume that’s people watching it to completion, (which it wont be, some people will bail some people will watch it more than once).A recent show to be renewed, like Heartstopper, which cost a fraction of what Sandman’s catering budget would have been, had only 14.5m hours in the first week, which was tiny, but doubled in the second week and just kept going.Whereas First Kill got more hours viewed, but still got canned, I suspect due to a mix of critical response and cost.It’s not just down to viewership though, it’ll be down to how many people watch, how often they watch it (Heartstopper is still trending on Twitter months after the release, because the fan base are still watching it, and the huge critical response to it), and ultimately how much it costs.Sandman probably costs enough that it’ll need to bring people to the streamer, rather than just keep them there, which I think it probably can.
As for First Kill there was an interview with the showrunner and they said it was cancelled because of the poor completion rate – there’s a chart floating around the internet somewhere showing it’s less than 45% of the viewers that finished the final episode. If you can’t even keep half of your initial audience then that’s a big problem when you want to justify making a second season.I can see how that can become a problem for Sandman, too, because the show changes story arcs mid-season and I’ve seen ppl struggling with the anthology-like nature of the whole thing, some outright stating they lost interest because of the changed focus on Rose.Personally I loved the show so I hope the stats work out in favour of another season (or more).
I didn’t realise First Kill had such a poor completion rate, that’s a huge drop off.I don’t think Sandman will have problems being renewed, Gaiman is on Twitter asking people to make sure they watch it to the end though.
For what it’s worth, Sandman has been better received than First Kill so fingers crossed it results in a higher completion rate!
I’ve had better received farts in elevators than First Kill.Sandman is what, 86/83 on RT, I’m sure it’s going to get a second series, it’ll just be a big conversation about money first.
Honestly, I don’t think there’s been enough discussion on the changing of the story arc midway through. It’s not even that it changes, but it feels completely separate and the stakes they set up in the first episode are basically addressed in the fifth and have little bearing on Rose. Who in turn, and this is a personal opinion, is kind of a bland character who we are just automatically to be interested in.Now I’m just more lukewarm to the show, but I’ll also add that I’m yet to finish because the Rose switch was so abrupt and to me a signal of how the show too faithful to the original material. There are stuff that works in graphic novels because they are independent novels that aren’t really smart choices for a cohesive show. And to me, that decision is one that is a questionable one, especially for a show as slow in tempo as Sandman.
I agree that the shift feels quite abrupt, though I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally wrong with the storytelling. It just would have worked a lot better if the show marked it in some way. There needed to be some kind of lull there, a space to regroup and set off onto a new story. Netflix doesn’t seem to get that breaks are an important element of the presentation, that you want to have some deliberate control over the pace, not always jump straight from one thing to the next. They’re still all about the binge.
Even just splitting the season into two halves and releasing the second batch a couple of weeks later would have made it feel much more natural. Or they could have moved “Dream of a Thousand Cats” there as a mini-episode, perhaps.Because as with the season as a whole, I thought the two “dual” episodes, “Sound of Her Wings”+“Men of Good Fortune” and “1000 Cats”+“Calliope”, would both have worked better with a more definite break between the parts, ideally with each as individual episodes. Netflix used to allow shows flexibility to vary episode lengths—have they completely abandoned that (except for extra-long special episodes)? I somehow suspect it’s some sort of contract/budget issue, with the actors, writers, etc. getting paid more for two 20-min episodes than for the same material combined into one 40-min one.
I wouldn’t put it as there being something fundamentally wrong with doing the shift, but rather the execution for it was really bizarre. Again, it worked in the graphical novels because the books had a sense of being separate entities. However, you can’t really do that in a serialized show like this, you need to set it up, which made the choice to just jump to it so baffling. It would genuinely interesting to see episode specific metrics as I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there was a drastic drop off after episode 7.To be honest, while making it two separate season releases might have helped, I think what was really needed was for them to start set up the Rose stuff from the start. Because at the moment they introduce the central conflict as Dream having become even more dour due to his imprisonment and setting up his quest to obtain his objects of power in the first episode. Then they introduce John Dee and spend two damn episodes fleshing him out as this menace alongside with Corinthian.Yet all of that was wrapped up in Episode 5 and while I really episode 6, the sudden shift in episode 7 was just insane. Again, not something that couldn’t be made to work, but I don’t think it did work. Especially because after we have been told of Dream’s great task of restoring the Dreaming, he basically just does it off-screen before instantly this great threat, and the super-special new character, appearing. I’m sorry if this is coming across increasingly as more I write this, the more baffled I am by the creative choices here.
Yeah, this is exactly the problem I mean. You haven’t finished the show and in the eyes of a Netflix statistician this might read as “you don’t like the show bc you quit half-way through” and if that happens a lot then it’s not a good look.Part of the issue is that everything is so serialised these days that ppl expect a season of a show (especially when it’s dropped with the binge model) is one long coherent story. But that’s not what they’re doing cause they’re adapting 2 comic books for one season. I think it would have been better to split the season – separate the two parts and give the audience the mental space to adjust that a new story arc is starting.
Well, to be fair, one of the reasons I am pausing on the show is due to their creative decisions, so I don’t know if that would be an unfair conclusion for Netflix to draw. However, I will push myself to finish the show this weekend.Something I would dispute, though, is that Sandman’s issue is that people expect every show to be a long coherent story. There are plenty of successful anthology and procedural shows after all. Rather, the problem with Sandman is that it sets itself up as a long coherent story with established stakes in episode one before just anticlimactically tying everything up midway through and introducing even larger stakes out of nowhere.
This is not a viewer problem, this is a show problem.
Yeah, I don’t disagree with that. Either way they didn’t quite communicate what kind of show it would be for those who haven’t read the comics or aren’t aware that they adapt two story arcs for this.
First Kill is a weird one as while it really great initial numbers, the Netflix sources claimed that ‘it didn’t have the staying power of most Netflix shows, still did not meet thresholds for viewing and completion of episodes’ which nobody can really figure out what it means. My own suspicion is that those large numbers weigh even more than normal on the first episodes, indicating that there were a lot of people giving it an initial chance, but that the dropoff to the last episodes was more drastic than expected.
The reviews are also something else to consider as they were pretty bad and even the positive ones often focused on how utterly stupid the show was. That’s always the tricky part when considering renewals as you will often see a much larger drop off between the first and the second season than necessarily during the season itself. Something to remember is that First Kill was an astonishingly cheap show considering its scope, so I don’t genuinely think Netflix would have pulled off the plug on that if they thought there was potential there.
It was a show I kept putting off – and now probably won’t watch because it’s been cancelled.
More like 15-16m given Sandman’s first season was around 8 hours long (excluding the bonus episode which was not released in that first week).I do think Sandman will get good viewership for the following weeks as it has had really positive buzz and good reviews. And shows that have high viewership and good reviews tend to get even stronger when the next seasons come out if they maintain quality.IMO this is an example of a show that may have benefited with a weekly release if it ends up cancelled after one season.
I don’t know why in my brain I thought it was 10 hours long, I forgot the episodes were variable length.I’m in half a mind with the weekly release schedule, me and my other half were enjoying dipping into the Marvel shows once a week, but life gets in the way quite often and it was good to get through Sandman in 3 days straight, ditto for the recent series of Stranger Things, but then we watched that well after it had been released.I guess Netflix still think it’s the best way to get people to reup for the month, rather than maybe getting two or three months out of someone.
I’m all for a second season, but not and I can’t stress this enough, not if they’re going to scale it down and give it the Altered Carbon Season 2 treatment. I mean…supposed season 2. That was just a rumor. Never existed. Season one of Altered Carbon ended well enough.
I’m really glad I skipped that second season and I feel bad for Anthony Mackie and the agent he hopefully fired
I for one would’ve bet heavily on a season of cyberpunk that was mostly set in a forest cave. People look back on Deep Space 9 so fondly and that show was like, 80% caves
If this doesn’t get a 2nd I swear I’m done with anything related to DC/Vertigo or Warner bros. After cancelling Swamp Thing after they aired the 1st friggin episode, and all that nonsense with the DC streaming service and HBO max I’ve pretty much had it with that sh*t-show. What kind of incompetent f*ckups do they have running that company? Seriously, what a sorry group of FN losers
IF this gets canceled (I don’t think it will), I don’t know if Warner Bros. deserves the blame. The producers shopped it around and landed with the streamer that was willing to give them the budget they wanted for 11 episodes.I think they have the rights to find another streamer if Netflix cancels it, but they’d be starting negotiations all over again and probably wouldn’t get the budget they would like.
The show did fine and he’s negotiating a higher budget. Gaiman is one of the few comic book writers who managed to adapt to the realities of the TV/movie industry. (Unlike… say… Alan Moore.)He gets paid and his shit gets made.Negotiations could fail and season 2 could get shitcanned, but at this point in the process, everything we’re hearing is posturing.
Neil’s also realistic and doesn’t expect it to be exactly like the book.
I remember he got early drafts of Coraline and asked the screenwriters to make it less like his original story.
Even American Gods made several updates I felt made sense for the era it was made in.
And with American Gods, he told them to try and stretch out the story as much as they can, and if need be introduce elements from Anansi Boys. Meanwhile, Moore hearing the term “eggy in a basket” in V for Vendetta was line crossing moment for him.
Which is what wrecked the show. If it had just been a two-season telling of the original story it would have been much better, but instead everyone got greedy.
Yeah that’s huge. They’re fundamentally different mediums, so adaptations require certain changes, and Gaiman has not only accepted that, but also excels at it.
and Good Omens, while pretty dang close to the book still had tweaks and changes to make it work better.
Man, I loved American Gods adaption. Great actors doing excellent work. I was really frustrated that all the problems they had with actually getting it made and re-castings and the price were just too much for the streamer to deal with. Still, I’m glad we got the seasons we did out of it.
thank God he had a hand in this production–Dream is much, MUCH more likeable from the start, and he’s already growing as a character. The comics were interesting in that you could see Gaiman growing as the books went on, but I very much enjoyed this Dream coming from a ‘less assholy’ place from the start. He’s still a standoffish asshole, but not quite so much as the books, if that makes sense.
I’d also like to think the producers are asking for a multiple-season renewal. I know that’s not the Netflix way, but if it took two years to make this season and the next season can’t start preproduction until two months after the previous season hits streaming, getting through the whole series will take [does series of complex mathematical equations in head] too long.
Gaiman is one of the few comic book writers who managed to adapt to the realities of the TV/movie industry. (Unlike… say… Alan Moore.)Well, Alan Moore doesn’t adapt to any reality, let alone the ones of the TV/movie industry.
He makes his own reality with the power of Magic! But not the same magic that cunt Grant Morrison uses!!!Alan Moore is such a caricature of a comic book writer so far up his own ass. I often wonder if its all an act but then I read more about the silly shit he does and convince myself that someone that silly lives in the world
DMZ, Y The Last Man, Sandman, second seasons seem next to impossible for Vertigo Comics. Can the billionaires running things skip one space trip and just make more of these?
better yet, can they start over with Y: the Last Man… and make it fun instead of with the tone of a Walking Dead spinoff.
One thing to keep in mind is that Gaiman spent 20+ years fending off adaptations of Sandman that didn’t live up to his vision. So it makes sense that he’d take a position of “I’d rather not make any more than not make it the way I want it to be.” Netflix needs another big hit after Stranger Things ends, so this is probably posturing over negotiations.
I like some good old-fashioned AV Club snark now and then but it’s also nice when once in a while a person writing about a thing seems to like the thing and want the thing to succeed and is open about it, as with this article.
Does it end on a cliffhanger?
The major threads of the season are wrapped up. It ends on a suspenseful note with a couple “bad guys” vowing revenge but no actual cliffhanger.
The main story is great. The visuals could be a lot better. The acting is mediocre at best (soap level). And the fact the king of dreams is a depressed looking vampire wannabee does not make him very believable as the lord of the realm where wonders happen .
Would be a crime if it didn’t get renewed.It’s one of those few shows that I ended up just watching twice (with the second viewing being quite soon after the first) because it was so enjoyable the first time (see also: Arcane, Crazy-Ex Girlfriend, A Series of Unfortunate Events).Maybe I should put it on in the background for a “third” watch to help support it?
How expensive is the show? anyone know?
At least a whole Ruby’s worth.
He was encouraging people to watch…Not that it would not be canceled…
He was encouraging people to watch and explaining how things work at Netflix
I absolutely loved The Sandman, and I really hope they make more. The surprise episode(s) on 8/19 were a treat, and amazingly done (at least three Doctor Who actors so far, Jenna Coleman, Arthur Darvill and Derek Jacobi.
Not to mention David and Georgia Tennant.
Plus two Tennants! Though if we do get a second season, I hope they continue this trend with Dream somehow getting into a shouting match with Catherine Tate.
If Donna Noble had been the Vortex, she’d have killed Dream as soon as she got her powers.
Why didnt he just demand a multi season contract?
you are not very smart, aren’t you?
Smarter than you, obviously.
I’m sure you think that, generally speaking, dumb people overestimate their intelligence. Your initial comment is proof of that.
There was nothing wrong with my comment, youre just an asshole. Fuck off.
You keep saying my comment was stupid, you havent said ONE FUCKING THING that supports that. You really are just a snarky dumbshit.
Ok i will break it down for you since you insist, it is an idiotic comment for the following reasons, first do you not think all show runners / creators prefer a multi season contract right off the gate? do you not think someone who is so close to this project, as Gaiman did, did not try to leverage a multi season contract? are you really that freaking dense? this is akin to telling someone to watch out for rain when that person is already under the rain under an umbrella, Not only is this not the first foray of Gaiman into live action adaptations of his work into TV format but arguably his most iconic and relevant. Secondly Netflix does not do multi season contracts especially when seasons are as expensive as the Sandman was, it just not a industry standard, finally but more importantly Sandman will always be a gamble and a challenge, deemed unfilmable for years, there is absolutely no way a multi season contract was even an option anywhere. so asking serves no purpose other than illustrating that yeah you’re a fucking idiot
No, you are a fucking asshole. The briefest glance at your post history shows youre a fucking combative psycho who thinks hes WAY smarter than he is. Gaiman couldve gave them an ultimatum and walked away if they didnt comply. You are the fucking moron, sir. Youre probably an angry child who lives in a basement, EVERY COMMENT YOU MAKE CONFIRMS IT. FUCK. OFF. YOU LOSE. GO AWAY.
Seriously ive never seen a crazier, dumber piece of shit than you on this page, and thats saying a lot. YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY IN NO POSITION TO JUDGE ANYONE’S INTELLIGENCE.
The fact it takes you on average two comments to get your thoughts out, proves my point. I might be whatever you please, however it does not change the fact that you are one of the most hilariously idiotic and stupid people I have the pleasure of “combating” online. I did not lose as your ultimatum argument, putting it kindly haha proves the whole point you are not very smart, and hey i might be a moron, who overestimates his intelligence and live in a basement, hell if you please i’m worse than that I live under an overpass in derelict conditions and failed elementary school (which I’m not, but idiots like you seldom understand sarcasm). However, I’ll never be as dumbfoundingly idiotic as you.
It proves nothing. I respond whenever i feel like it. It takes no effort to respond to your idiotic ramblings. Again, youre not smarter than me-youre probably not smarter than ANYONE-youre just an irritible psycho. Youve lost, this isnt even an argument, go away already.
Youre not a fraction as intelligent as me. Not on YOUR BEST FUCKING DAY. But keep lying to yourself, your delusions are obviously enjoyable to you, if noone else.
The only stupid thing ive done is continue to respond to you, moron, which im ending after this comment.
You are hilarious, you know that? I’m having so much fun piggy boy
Youre not a fraction as intelligent as me. Not on YOUR BEST FUCKING DAYI’m so amused by your cathartic release I’m sure you desperately want to believe that I’m sure if you repeat it enough it will become true, but I’m not the idiot who asked.
Why didnt he just demand a multi season contract?So respond or not, you forever will be this moron hahahahahaha and I think this small part bears repeating I might be an absolute tool a moron, a bottom of the barrel situation kind of guy, but I’ll never be as dumbfoundingly idiotic as you.
Loved it. And I really hope we get more as well thought out.
This is exactly why I never got that excited about this show. It looks good and I’m glad the response has been positive, but even if it does get a second season there’s no way it will last long enough to adapt the entire series. I’ll check it out at some point but I’m not getting too attached.
For what it’s worth, season 1 is relatively self-contained; no cliff-hangers or significant dangling plot threads, just hints at future stories. So if that’s the concern, please feel free to watch season 1 (and help the rest of us get a season 2)!
I’m not going to tell you how to choose what you watch, especially on Netflix who historically cancels on a whim, but this is still obviously self defeating. Apparently the same thing happens in publishing, where people are tired of long epic stories that may or may not be finished in twenty years, so they stop reading new series until they are actually finished. Except then the publishers don’t publish anything past the first book because nobody bought the first one.Anyway, I have no relationship to the source material, but I thought the season was very well contained. It’s clear that there’s more to be told in the universe, but it didn’t leave me missing those other stories. It seems like people who read the comics are looking forward to specific storylines, so maybe it won’t work as well for you, but I think you could possibly watch it and be satisfied with just what it is.
I hope this is just Gaiman hedging his bets, and the show gets a much-deserved second season. I could see them skipping quite a bit and just rushing straight to The Kindly Ones for a full season arc and ending it there, though. However I definitely would miss it if they didn’t adapt Brief Lives as well. (Why yes, I did just re-read all of Sandman this weekend after watching the series, why do you ask?)
Isn’t the Netflix model to do two seasons minimum usually?
But nobody’s presented a compelling argument other then “but you gotta watch it”. I’ve seen the first two episodes, I find it very boring and dense. The fear of missing out on what book fans have been praising for years now is not enough to get me to snooze threw episode 3. I know a lot of people watching this like “It’s kinda boring and a I don’t get it but everyone’s watching it so I have to as well.”
Don’t watch. No one cares nearly as much as you clearly think we do.
I love the comic. I cannot deny that the first two are intriguing but pretty boring. The third is better, the fourth really ramps it up, the fifth intense, and the sixth is one of my favorite episodes of television.
I’ve realized that my parents are outliers. I used to think of them as consumers of mainstream mass appeal stuff but they’re not they are even more basic in their viewing habits than I thought.
Example: I threw on the trailer for Everything Everywhere All At Once last night and my Mom said it looked like a weird uninteresting film. She likes Hallmark films.
In what world is an A24 film “mainstream mass appeal”?
I was surprised as soon as I heard it was appearing on Netflix. I thought, “Oh, Netflix? The place where shows that want to go for seven seasons and write accordingly get routinely axed after two? Because no one is getting a Netflix account to watch season three of a show?” But if you really want it made somewhere, I guess you take what you can get.
Netflix needs that money for more homo/trans-phobic comedy specials.
If I cancel my subscription the instant I’m done watching this season… Do we think that helps the algorithm?
Been seeing ads for this all over this weekend, note once did they note Neil G. wrote it. Weirdly I thought it kinda reminded me of American Gods type of concept.
That’s a bummer if it doesn’t happen. I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed the show even though I went in expecting to hate it.
Whether or not this show goes to s2, it’s still the end of peak TV. Every streamer is making smaller, safer bets. There will be fewer splashy, pricey things like this and, sadly, also fewer quirky shows that only could have happened on streaming. And that’s not even counting the back catalogs that will be cut back to avoid residuals (of course this only impacts content to which residuals apply). We will look back at the last 15 years or so and realize how good we had it.
aka Neil Gaiman pays attention to how Netflix operates.
Never, ever, assume Netflix will greenlight a new season no matter how good/popular your product is.
I mean, if this can’t get renewed, what could? It plays well in every country on earth
It did really well, but so did Archive 81 and a host of others that didn’t get picked up for a second season.
The network overseers slapped a Disneyesque patina that just didn’t fit. It lacks the brooding, sinister under vibe set in a surreal multidimensional space. None of actors embodied their characters psyche, even the few that gave entertaining performances. Unfamiliar with the comics, I was still unmoved when I watched it. But after one reviewer suggested reading them, only made me more disappointed in the tv mini-series. The comics themselves where rated for “mature audiences’ though tame by today’s standards. So making them blandly unobjectionable served no purpose.
It would be cheaper and probably better looking if they used Disney’s “the volume” during production.
If it doesn’t get a second season, I will personally blame whoever wrote the article entitled “Netflix’s The Sandman ticks off its source material’s boxes but can’t capture its magic,” whoever that fucking idiot was.