Successor to the King
With the success of Netflix’s The Sandman and its upcoming second season, Neil Gaiman has firmly cemented himself as one of the most adapted authors in recent memory. Like fellow spooky-minded author Stephen King, Gaiman’s work has been a deep well from which Hollywood continues to draw. With his eerie brand of imagination, he’s proven to be one of the most reliable voices in the fantasy genre, both for his own stories and for other creators. Behind the scenes, Gaiman has built a diverse career, from writing the localized English script for Princess Mononoke to co-writing the dark, brooding 2007 3D-animated Beowulf. He’s penned episodes of Doctor Who and Babylon 5, and even wrote the opening for Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Essentially, if your story barely resembles reality, Gaiman has probably been on someone’s shortlist.
For comic book fans and fantasy lovers, his enduring popularity is no mystery. (If you need proof of his place in nerd culture, look no further than his memorable cameo on The Big Bang Theory, where a single tweet of his drives the plot of an entire episode.) Often called a modern successor to Stephen King, Gaiman fills his stories with rich detail, death-tinged whimsy, and a knack for fairy-tale-like inversions of the hero’s journey. Where King often meets his characters with hostility and gruesome fates, Gaiman leans into the fantastical and bittersweet. Whatever fuels the fascination with these themes, they remain both commercially successful and critically celebrated. Gaiman even made literary history by becoming the first author to win the Newbery and Carnegie medals for the same book, his 2008 novel The Graveyard Book.
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Upcoming Projects
The Graveyard Book, widely regarded as one of Neil Gaiman’s finest Young Adult novels, continues its long journey through development hell. In mid-2022, Disney brought new life into the project by assigning Marc Forster to direct and David Magee to adapt the screenplay, with no involvement from Gaiman himself in the creative process. However, in September 2024, production was indefinitely paused amid various concerns, most notably, the rising sexual misconduct allegations against the author. As of 2025, the adaptation remains dormant, with no casting or production underway, and no clear indication that the project will resume anytime soon.
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‘The Sandman’ and Comic Royalty
Before his literary career, Gaiman was actually a screenwriter, penning the dark fantasy 1996 BBC series Neverwhere, which he later novelized and released as his first solo novel. In classic Gaiman fashion, the series takes place in the mythical “London Below,” a magical inversion of a widely recognizable landscape. Due to production limitations, the series did not fulfill Gaiman’s vision, and it caused him to leave the industry for a good while until he co-wrote Beowulf in 2007.
In the meantime, some of his most famous works had been adapted to the silver screen, with varying levels of involvement from Gaiman himself. That same year, 2007, Gaiman’s novel Stardust was adapted with big names attached, including Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Mark Strong, Claire Danes, and Charlie Cox, and directed by future Kingsman director Matthew Vaughn. Though it flew under the radar upon its release, it has since been embraced as a fan favorite, a more fantastical version of The Princess Bride. In 2009, came Coraline, a creepy stop-motion children’s film directed by Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick, based on Gaiman’s novella of the same name. In 2017, American Gods, Gaiman’s most popular work of literature, got its own series on Starz, where Gaiman was noticeably less involved. The series suffered due to a lot of behind-the-scenes upheaval, including the firing of one of its leads, and ultimately could not live up to its inspiration, ending in 2021. Next came the 2019 hit show Good Omens, and Gaiman decided to helm the writing of the series, based on his own 1990s novel with Sir Terry Pratchett. So successful was the show, where the birth of the Son of Satan portends the End Times, that its strange and dark humor returned for a second season in 2023 on Amazon Prime. The Gaiman touch attracted several big names, including Benedict Cumberbatch, Frances McDormand, and David Tennant, which helped make it a critically acclaimed series apart from its nerdy fanfare.
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For all the nerdy fanfare, Gaiman has secured his spot in geek culture with great success in his comic writing that has paralleled his literary career. It is where Gaiman first learned to write. The Sandman came in 1989 when Gaiman, who was working for DC Comics, was tasked with re-inventing an old character. Not only did he put a fresh spin on the character, but he also created a whole other universe that took on legs of its own. The series eclipsed long-standing DC benchmarks for sales, including for iconic characters like Batman and Superman, and launched a number of spinoffs that would eventually constitute their own series. The Sandman became a Netflix hit in 2022 after gestating for decades, waiting for the right helmsman. Season 2 is currently in production and is expected in 2025. Even before the immersive series reached the screen, other characters from Gaiman’s comic universe had made the leap. The popular show Lucifer, inspired by the Sandman comics, had already enjoyed a successful commercial and critical run on FOX and later Netflix, ending in 2021. In addition, Death, another character from the universe, got her own showcase in a DC animated short in 2019.
Due to his versatility, Gaiman’s success has been underappreciated. But it is actually his willingness to explore different mediums that has made his career so storied.
The Graveyard Book, long in development at Disney, was indefinitely paused in 2024 after years of stalled progress, casting doubt on whether the adaptation will ever reach the screen. Still, Hollywood continues to dip into Gaiman’s imagination. His 2013 book The Ocean at the End of the Lane won a National Book Award, and his retelling of Norse Mythology has been well received. For now, fans can look forward to Amazon’s Anansi Boys and Netflix’s The Sandman Season 2, while the rest of Gaiman’s worlds wait in the wings.
By Patrick Lynott
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Patrick Lynott is a writer and screenwriter. He cares about Cinema. He cares about meaningful stories. And he cares about preserving and elevating things that people work long and hard on.Despite the incessant barrage of “content” vying for his (and everyone’s) attention, he believes it’s never been more important to pedestalize labors of real art across from a spectrum of voices. The Hollywood Insider is one of the few networks committed to doing this through substantive coverage of quality entertainment. The future of good Cinema and healthy culture relies on outlets and people willing to champion those values. Here’s to that future.
Patrick Lynott is a writer and screenwriter. He cares about Cinema. He cares about meaningful stories. And he cares about preserving and elevating things that people work long and hard on.Despite the incessant barrage of “content” vying for his (and everyone’s) attention, he believes it’s never been more important to pedestalize labors of real art across from a spectrum of voices. The Hollywood Insider is one of the few networks committed to doing this through substantive coverage of quality entertainment. The future of good Cinema and healthy culture relies on outlets and people willing to champion those values. Here’s to that future.
