You may think there’s no room for new series based on DC’s huge comic book library, but you’d be mistaken. With its adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, Netflix is taking on one of the most critically regarded DC publications of all time. We finally got our first peek at footage from the new series thanks to Netflix’s Tudum event, where we saw Tom Sturridge as Morpheus for the first time. The sequence depicted is a meticulous replica of the original comic.
The Sandman was first published on December 1, 1988, by DC Comics’ Vertigo brand, and was created by Gaiman, Kieth, and Dringenberg. After issue #5, Kieth left the title, with Dringenberg taking over as penciler and Malcolm Jones III as inker.
Morpheus, a.k.a. Dream of the Endless, is an unimaginably old entity who is also the living personification of dreams, as told in The Sandman. He resides in The Dreaming, a region dedicated to the REM state of existence throughout the cosmos; of course, this means he spends a lot of time near Earth courting gods, inspiring idiots to become authors, and occasionally arousing waking terrors. A weary Morpheus is caught by an immortality-seeking magus when the series begins in 1916. In 1989, he manages to flee and sets out to restore order to his shattered realm.
Dream seeks vengeance on his captors after escaping and begins to restore his kingdom, which had nearly crumbled in his absence. Last summer, Gaiman announced that Netflix’s version of The Sandman will take place in 2021, implying that Dream had been held captive for 105 years rather than 70 years in the world of the show.
The Sandman was published for 75 issues and ended in March 1996. The Sandman: The Dream Hunters, which ran for four issues in 1999, and The Sandman: Overture, which ran for six issues from 2013 to 2015, were its successors. The story has also generated a number of spinoffs, including Death of the Endless comics starring Dream’s sister, as well as a 75-issue solo series starring Lucifer Morningstar. Lucifer, a TV show based on Vertigo’s portrayal of the Devil that starred Tom Ellis as the lead character and aired on Fox for three seasons before being picked up by Netflix for three more.
In January 2021, Netflix announced the first of the cast and their roles:
- Tom Sturridge is DREAM, Lord of the Dreaming
- Gwendoline Christie is LUCIFER, Ruler of Hell
- Vivienne Acheampong is LUCIENNE, chief librarian, and trusted guardian of Dream’s realm
- Boyd Holbrook is THE CORINTHIAN, an escaped nightmare who wishes to taste all that the world has in store
- Charles Dance is RODERICK BURGESS, Charlatan, blackmailer, and magician
- Asim Chaudhry is ABEL and Sanjeev Bhaskar is CAIN, the first victim and the first predator, residents, and loyal subjects of the Dream Realm.
Jenna Coleman, Stephen Fry, Patton Oswalt, David Thewlis, and Joely Richardson were among the new cast members announced by Netflix in May 2021. “There are more sections to be announced,” Gaiman wrote in a blog post. And I thought it could be interesting to tell you about a few of them, as well as the reasoning behind them.
The Sandman, a Netflix original series, however, does not yet have an official release date, but it is expected in 2022.
Sources: Netflix, CBR.com, Rotten Tomatoes, IGN Southeast Asia