The Cast Has Been Set for Neil Gaiman's THE SANDMAN Netflix Series
Netflix has finally announced the cast of its live-action series adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s incredible dark fantasy graphic novel The Sandman. That cast includes Tom Sturridge (Mary Shelly), Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones), Vivienne Acheampong (The Witches), Boyd Holbrook (The Predator), Charles Dance (Game of Thrones), Asim Chaudhry, and Sanjeev Bhaskar.
The series is described as “a rich blend of modern myth and dark fantasy in which contemporary fiction, historical drama and legend are seamlessly interwoven.” The story follows “the people and places affected by Morpheus, the Dream King, as he tries to fix all the cosmic and human mistakes he’s made during his vast existence.”
Here’s who the actors will be playing:
Tom Sturridge is Dream, Lord of 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 Chaudry is Abel and Sanjeev Bhaskar is Cain, the first victim and the first predator, residents and loyal subjects of the Dream Realm
Neil Gaiman said in a statement:
“For the last thirty-three years, the Sandman characters have breathed and walked around and talked in my head. I’m unbelievably happy that now, finally, they get to step out of my head and into reality. 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.
“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.”
Allan Heinberg (Wonder Woman, Grey’s Anatomy) will serve as showrunner and executive producer alongside Gaiman and David S. Goyer (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Terminator: Dark Fate, Foundation). Gaiman, Goyer and Heinberg are also co-writers on the project.
The first season of the series is expected to adapt the first arc of the Vertigo comics series, "Preludes and Nocturnes," which finds Morpheus captured by a black magician and held prisoner for the better part of a century. When he finally escapes, he sets about recovering three very important items.
In a previous interview, Gaiman confirmed that the storyline for the show will be set in 2021, and there will be some changes from the source material. He explained:
“We’re working with Netflix, we were meant to start shooting at the end of May. Given this COVID world, everything is on pause. The Netflix version is going to begin in 2021, so Morpheus will have been kept prisoner in the Netflix version for 105 years rather than 70 years. We’ll take that one, see what that does. It’s already in the scripts, it does interesting things because… if we were creating this character now, what gender would the character be?”
I’m excited to see how this series turns out!