BURBANK, CA – Disney has decided to put a pause on its planned feature adaptation of The Graveyard Book after accusations against the book’s author, Neil Gaiman, surfaced earlier this year. Tortoise Media broke the story in July.
According to the platform, a woman named Scarlett alleged Gaiman sexually assaulted her in February 2022. She was serving as a nanny to his children at the time. Another woman who goes by the identity of K also accused Gaiman of assault “amid an otherwise consensual relationship” nearly 20 years ago. K met Gaiman at a book signing in Florida back in 2003.
According to Tortoise Media,
“[Gaiman] believes K’s allegations are motivated by her regret over their relationship and that Scarlett was suffering from a condition associated with false memories at the time of her relationship with him, a claim which is not supported by her medical records and medical history.”
Neil Gaiman made the TIME 100 list of most influential people last year. He spoke about revisiting The Sandman, a novel he wrote 30 years ago, for comics in 2022.
“It felt like we were doing something that was literally impossible,” the author shared. “I’d spent 30 years waiting for somebody to make a bad Sandman film. And just hoping that if I was really lucky, maybe it wouldn’t be bad. So getting to a place where we’re given the money and the resources to make Sandman from the comics is unexpected and an absolute delight.”
When discussing the motivation to write The Sandman, Neil told TIME, “I’ve learned to trust my dreams and nightmares. When I was a kid, I had terrible nightmares. And when I was writing Sandman, they continued. But whenever I’d get a nightmare, I would wake up thrilled and immediately jot it down and go, ‘Whoa, I can use that.’ Fairly quickly, the nightmares just went away. My eventual theory was that whoever was giving me them was so disappointed by my reaction to them that they just couldn’t be bothered anymore.”
Neil Gaiman released The Graveyard Book in 2008. The storyline follows a boy named Nobody who is raised by supernatural forces after his family is brutally murdered.