As much as you’d like to think the two events aren’t directly connected, it’s quite the coincidence that James Gunn’s response to the calls for Zack Snyder’s SnyderVerse to be sold off to Netflix was to tell them that it wasn’t going to happen, right before he handed over another DC property to the streaming service.
Originally designed as an HBO Max exclusive before it was decided the entire slate needed to be refitted in order to align with Gunn and Peter Safran’s overhauled shared universe, Neil Gaiman adaptation Dead Boy Detectives was passed off to a platform who already brought one of the creator’s legendary works to vivid life with The Sandman.
It was Gaiman himself who confirmed that Dead Boy Detectives would occupy the same universe as Tom Sturridge’s Dream, and while no cross-pollinations or Easter Eggs have been confirmed or denied as of yet, recent events have opened the doors to the hypothetical becoming the very real.
Dead Boy Detectives wrapped shooting in early April, with cameras on the second season of The Sandman rolling at the beginning of last week. Of course, that’s no guarantee that a crossover is immediately going to be on the cards, but you’d imagine the two projects overlapping in such close proximity has at least been discussed by the Netflix hierarchy by now.
It could be a long way away or just around the corner, but as the SnyderVerse subset lick their wounds, Netflix is forging full steam ahead on an altogether different kind of interconnected DCU sandbox.