Disney pauses adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s “The Graveyard Book”

Disney has paused its adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book despite setting up production offices. The move follows allegations of sexual assault and abuse by five women. Tortoise first reported the allegations against Gaiman by two women in July in its podcast, Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman. Three more women came forward with further allegations, extending the timeline of Gaiman’s alleged sexual misconduct back to 1986.

In August, Netflix cancelled the second season of Dead Boy Detectives, which is based on Gaiman’s intellectual property, although the streamer made no connection to the sexual allegations. The second season of Gaiman’s The Sandman, which has been in production since last year, is still being made.

The initial two allegations were from women who said they were in consensual relationships with Gaiman, during which they say he pressured them into degrading and painful sex that they neither wanted or enjoyed. One met him as a teenage fan at a book signing in Florida in 2003, and the other was his child’s nanny in New Zealand in 2022.

Gaiman has strenuously denied any non-consensual sex with any of the women. He signed non-disclosure agreements with two of them, his child’s former nanny and a woman who lived on his New York property until 2021.

Gaiman’s position is that the first NDA was standard for the staff of a high-profile individual and that the second, which came with a $275,000 settlement, was to avoid expensive and protracted litigation.

The Graveyard Book, published in 2008, is about a boy raised by ghosts in a cemetery. Marc Forster was attached to direct Disney’s adaptation, which has not been scrapped altogether. There are reportedly other factors in its decision to pause the project besides the sexual allegations against Gaiman.

Gaiman’s publishers in the UK – Bloomsbury and Headline – and in the US – HarperCollins – have not commented on the allegations against him.

The author has cancelled his only scheduled public appearance and has not commented publicly on the allegations against him.