According to Variety, an all-star team of writers and producers have been tasked with creating a Dead Boy Detectives pilot for HBO Max. A pilot order doesn’t mean a series is definite, but it is a step up from the vagueness of “in development.”
No one has been cast in the pilot yet, but expert hands are working behind the scenes: Steve Yockey (co-showrunner of The Flight Attendant) is writing and executive producing; Jeremy Carver (creator of HBO Max’s Doom Patrol) is executive producing; and, of course, Greg Berlanti is executive producing, along with his Berlanti Productions colleagues Sarah Schechter and David Madden. Berlanti Productions produces both Flight Attendant and Doom Patrol, along with Berlanti’s many, many DC Comics series.
The Dead Boy Detectives, Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine, first appeared in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, and were created by Gaiman and artist Matt Wagner. The two kids are ghostly children who choose to stick around on Earth (rather than continuing to the afterlife) and investigate supernatural crimes. They’ve appeared in other Vertigo books, including The Books of Magic, and briefly had their own series.
The boys will appear in Doom Patrol‘s upcoming third season, played by Ty Tennant and Sebastian Croft, but Variety notes that these actors “are not believed to be attached to the pilot at this time.”
Dead Boy Detectives is expected to start filming in November, so if it does get picked up as a series, it won’t be until next year at earliest.
