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Following on from reporting earlier this week that Amazon Prime Video and the BBC had paused pre-production on the final season of their Good Omens adaptation, Deadline now further reports that Neil Gaiman, co-author of the original novel, may step back from the series entirely.
According to Deadline, Gaiman has offered to step back from the third and final season of the show—of which he was set to be one of the remaining executive producers in the wake of director Douglas McKinnon’s sudden exit from the show—after what the trade describes as “crisis talks over the Terry Pratchett adaptation’s future,” which allegedly saw pre-production paused on the series ahead of its planned shooting in January 2025 earlier this week. io9 has reached out to Amazon for comment on Good Omens‘ future with or without Gaiman, and will update this post if and when we hear back.
The move comes after Gaiman was accused in July of sexual assault by multiple women the writer had previously established consensual relationships with, in a series of allegations laid out in a podcast series from Tortoise Media called Master: the Allegations Against Neil Gaiman. Following the series, several more women came forward in reporting by Rolling Stone. Deadline further noted that Gaiman’s offer to step back was not an admission to the accusations laid out against him in Tortoise Media and Rolling Stone’s reporting, and that the allegations have “disturbed” the author.
The alleged pause on Good Omens‘ pre-production also comes at a time when several other Gaiman projects are set to begin making major headways. Disney’s film adaptation of his 2008 novel The Graveyard Book similarly went on pause earlier this month. First reported by IndieWire, the pause on the film was the culmination of “multiple factors, including the allegations [against Gaiman],” and the film has not been scrapped.
Meanwhile over at Netflix, plans are underway to reveal more from the second season of its critically acclaimed adaptation of Gaiman’s comic series The Sandman later this week as part of its “Geeked Week” presentation, although it remains unseen just how and if the streamer will address Gaiman’s relationship with the project. The streamer had also recently cancelled another Gaiman-connected series, Dead Boy Detectives, late last month, although reporting on its cancellation made no mention of the ongoing accusations against the author.
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