At last! Neil Gaiman’s dreams have come true and the long patient wait has finally come to a head. After a few false starts and bumps in the road, Netflix is finally releasing the popular DC Comics dark fantasy comic series The Sandman, some thirty-three years after first appearing in Gaiman’s rich imagination.
The Sandman follows the people and places affected by the Dream King, Morpheus, as he tries to remedy all the mistakes he’s made during his virtually endless existence, on both cosmic and human levels. Netflix describes the series as “a rich blend of modern myth and dark fantasy in which contemporary fiction, historical drama and legend are seamlessly interwoven.”
Gaiman will serve as executive producer and co-writer for the adaptation, alongside David S. Goyer (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Terminator: Dark Fate, Foundation) and showrunner Allan Heinberg (Wonder Woman, Grey’s Anatomy). The Sandman has had a long, arduous road to the big screen, including a failed 2013 movie adaptation with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, so Gaiman is extremely pleased to explore the blank canvas offered in this incarnation.
There. A whole set of tweets written just before bed and set to go out when I’m fast asleep. I’m vaguely worried that I’ve mistimed them, but too late now. Here are the first seven members of the #Sandman cast to be announced officially. Seven down, hundreds to go. pic.twitter.com/DksGLyMkBf
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) January 28, 2021
“I can’t wait until the people out there get to see what we’ve been seeing as Dream and the rest of them take flesh, and the flesh belongs to some of the finest actors out there,” Gaiman proclaimed in a statement. The stellar cast stars the brilliant Charles Dance and Gwendoline Christie; supporting roles will be played by Tom Sturridge, Vivienne Acheampong, Boyd Holbrook, Asim Chaudhry, and Sanjeem Bhaskar. Here is the full cast list released by Netflix:
- TOM STURRIDGE: DREAM, Lord of the Dreaming
- GWENDOLINE CHRISTIE: LUCIFER, Ruler of Hell
- VIVIENNE ACHEAMPONG: LUCIENNE, chief librarian and trusted guardian of Dream’s realm
- BOYD HOLBROOK: THE CORINTHIAN, an escaped nightmare who wishes to taste all that the world has in store
- CHARLES DANCE: RODERICK BURGESS, Charlatan, blackmailer and magician
- ASIM CHAUDHRY: ABEL
- SANJEEV BHASKAR: CAIN, the first victim and the first predator, residents and loyal subjects of the Dream Realm.
Gaiman added, “This is astonishing, and I’m so grateful to the actors and to all of The Sandman collaborators — Netflix, Warner Bros., DC, to Allan Heinberg and David Goyer, and the legions of crafters and geniuses on the show — for making the wildest of all my dreams into reality.”
