In the wake of the imminent premiere of The Sandman on Netflix, one of the series’ creators is talking about the experience of the iconic comic characters coming to life. Neil Gaiman, the creator of the upcoming fantasy drama The Sandman, has disclosed that it took him over three decades to greenlit the production of a live-action remake of his eponymous comic book.
The reason was that he was afraid his work would have the same destiny as Howard the Duck. In a conversation with Total Film regarding the forthcoming Netflix TV series, Gaiman was of the view that he worked really hard to make sure that no sub-par live-action production of The Sandman would be going through ever.
Gaiman, who has the creation of the source Vertigo and DC Comics on his resume, has created the latest upcoming Netflix series with Allan Heinberg (Wonder Woman) and David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight). However, leading the creation of the TV series Good Omens adaptation, Neil Gaiman is undertaking a collaborative strategy to do the production with Heinberg and Goyer while offering more involvement than the TV series American Gods.
The Sandman centers around Morpheus who is considered to be the emperor of dreams and is among the seven Endless creatures. Morpheus gets incarcerated in between a wizardry ritual during the early 1900s and ultimately manages to escape nearly a century later, only to find out that his empire is in shambles.
Tom Sturridge is playing the lead role in the TV series Morpheus/Dream. Other notable cast members include Gwendoline Christie, Boyd Holdbrook, Vivienne Acheampong, Charles Dance, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Asim Chaudhry, Jenna Coleman, and Kirby Howell-Baptiste.
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While opening up about why it took so long for The Sandman to become a film or series, Gaiman voiced his thoughts, his fear and the childhood trauma of witnessing the favorite character of a comic book become an obvious joke.
He revealed when he was a young boy, Howard the Duck was his favorite, so he got very excited and happy to know that George Lucas was finally taking the comic books and adapting them for the big screen. Unfortunately, Howard the Duck: A New Breed Of Hero massively flopped, leading Lucasfilm to sell their department that eventually turned into the famous Pixar Studios.
But the most appealing part; the legendary character stayed defunct for several years because the production houses refrained from another production and didn’t want to risk yet another letdown. Keeping in view this case study, Gaiman fought his socks off to stop all the possible flop adaptations of The Sandman. Gaiman elucidates it:
“I didn’t have faith that we’d always get here, but I had faith that the important thing was to stop bad versions being made. Once a bad version is made, you never quite come back from that. It may sound silly, but when I was 14 or 15, my favorite comic was ‘Howard The Duck’. Steve Gerber, Gene Colan, Frank Brunner, satire, madness, glory… I was so excited when I heard George Lucas was making a movie. And then ‘A New Breed Of Hero’ came out. ‘Howard The Duck’ became a bad joke. I never wanted that to happen to Sandman and I saw scripts that would have made that happen.”
Every fan is curious to know if The Sandman’s early scripts were really as bad as Howard the Duck, but it is also a big relief for the wondering fans after seeing Gaiman’s story that they can have faith in Netflix to adapt the comic books as they should. If Gaiman has resisted the desire of his work to get adapted as a series for decades but now has given it the green signal, that means Neil really believes in Netflix being worthy of The Sandman and his legacy. Gaiman described that in his own words:
“I can’t promise this is the Sandman of your dreams, but I can promise I’m proud of what we’ve done. I can say that Stephen Fry as Gilbert is waiting for you, Boyd Holbrook as the Corinthian, the serial-killers’ convention… We also get to punch above our weight on casting, because there are people who love Sandman and desperately want to be in it. Everybody is on Sandman because they love it. And it’s magic.”
Neil Gaiman, David S. Goyer, and Allan Heinberg are serving as the executive producers in the Netflix series The Sandman, whereas Heinberg is also providing his services as the showrunner for Season 1. The plot of season 1 of The Sandman will majorly revolve around telling the story of The Sandman, a collection of the comic book publishings of Volume 1: Preludes & Nocturnes, which follows Dream in the early 1900s being abducted by a cult and a century later his successive release from there.
Netflix has also released the trailer of The Sandman. So prepare yourself as The Sandman is coming on Netflix on August 5, 2022.
