Based on the widespread acclaim to have greeted its first run – which manifested in tangible terms through 88 and 80 percent Rotten Tomatoes approval ratings from critics and audiences respectively – The Sandman didn’t put much of a foot wrong following its arrival on Netflix.
Depending on who you ask, the biggest issue pertaining to Neil Gaiman’s comic book series finally escaping decades in development hell is that it plunged the fandom into a state of panic when the streaming service took four whole months to get around to confirming it had been renewed.
Shooting may be on hold after being shut down just weeks after cameras started rolling thanks to the writers’ and actors’ strikes, but despite the massive popularity of The Sandman first time out, director Jamie Childs outlined that lessons have been learned in an interview with ScreenRant.
“It’s like we’ve done it before. We know what worked and didn’t. We know now coming at it, it was scary coming out at the first time because it’s like, we’re the first time putting that on screen and everyone who’s tried historically has not managed it yet. So we’re like, what’s different about us? Nothing. We could just mess this up or whatever. But we did Season 1 stuff really works. Some stuff we felt worked less. We’ve now got all that prior knowledge and we’re coming at it again, like a team who’ve done it before. It just feels really good.”
There’s always room for improvement regardless of how well-received any project is to begin with, so it’s encouraging to know The Sandman is aiming even higher in a concerted attempt to avoid “difficult second season syndrome.”