It’s taken decades of stops, starts, and unsuccessful attempts, but we’re finally getting a true adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s watershed comic book series The Sandman. Some 32 years after the series debuted from DC, Netflix is making its own version of The Sandman.
For decades, DC and Warner Bros. tried to make a Sandman movie. (One highly publicized version would have starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the lead role.) The Netflix show, developed by Gaiman, David Goyer, and Allan Heinberg, stars Tom Sturridge as the title character, with Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer, and Kirby Howell-Bapiste as Death. The trailer for the film looks very similar (not to mention extremely faithful) to the first volume of Gaiman’s Sandman series and reveals the show will premiere on August 5.
There’s also a new poster for the series.
For more on the show, Netflix has an entire panel with the creative team of the show — which also revealed that Star Wars legend Mark Hamill is joining the cast of the series.
Here is the series’ official synopsis:
There is another world that waits for all of us when we close our eyes and sleep — a place called the Dreaming, where The Sandman, Master of Dreams (Tom Sturridge), gives shape to all of our deepest fears and fantasies. But when Dream is unexpectedly captured and held prisoner for a century, his absence sets off a series of events that will change both the dreaming and waking worlds forever. To restore order, Dream must journey across different worlds and timelines to mend the mistakes he’s made during his vast existence, revisiting old friends and foes, and meeting new entities — both cosmic and human — along the way.
The Sandman premieres on Netflix on August 5. It only took 30+ years and the invention of streaming video to make it happen!
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