According To Neil Gaiman, This Is Why The Sandman Hasn't Been Given A Second Season ... Yet?
Neil Gaiman spent years (and years!) trying to bring his beloved comic book series "The Sandman" to life on screen, for much of that time as a movie, which consistently kept falling apart at every turn. But that dream was finally realized thanks to Netflix this summer as the heralded comic was adapted as a big-budget TV series, one that drew a huge audience for the streaming service. So, one might wonder, what is going on with a potential second season? Why hasn't anything been announced yet?
The man himself recently addressed that very question on Twitter, with Gaiman addressing fans who are begging Netflix to make an announcement. Gaiman, keeping it classy, decided to give us a peek behind the curtain, explaining that the company is only just now starting to put together the data and crunch the numbers to see if "The Sandman" season 2 would make business sense.
"Sandman Season 1 dropped Aug 5th. 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. Telling Netflix to hurry up won't make decisions happen faster."
Yes, the show has topped the charts on Netflix for weeks and drew millions of viewers but, as Gaiman also previously explained, the show is tremendously expensive to produce. As such, it will take a lot of viewership to justify a second season.
A complex system of measurement
The math for Netflix is somewhat mysterious but it all comes down to viewership versus dollars spent. Netflix doesn't make any money from ads (at least not yet) and doesn't really generate revenue that a traditional network or studio would. The company relied purely on subscriber dollars, and that makes the math tricky for determining a show's actual value. It's not like box office for a movie where you can weigh ticket sales against a budget and get there somewhat easily. Or like traditional viewership for TV that leads to ad sales, which can put together a logical equation on paper for a show's renewal chances.
To complicate matters further, Netflix has had a very rough year, losing subscribers for the first time in years, facing stock drops, and dealing with increased competition as a result of the ongoing streaming wars. That means, they are probably less likely to just roll the dice on an expensive endeavor these days. The math really has to check out. So, we'll see what the number crunchers come up with now that all of this data has been assembled.
"The Sandman" season 1 is currently streaming on Netflix.