It’s been a little more than a year since Netflix gave an 11-episode series order to The Sandman, based on Neil Gaiman’s DC comic. The epic drama, from Warner Bros TV, was impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, which shut down Hollywood production in mid-March. .
“Due to COVID, everything — as with every other piece of television being made around the world — has hit the pause button,” Gaiman said during the DC FanDome event Saturday. He said that The Sandman team has taken advantage of the delay “to get the scripts as close to perfect as we possibly could.”
With films and TV series slowly easing back into production amid the pandemic, “we are starting to cast again,” Gaiman said of the Netflix series.
At the event, Gaiman revealed a detail about the TV adaptation, which he executive produces with writer/showrunner Allan Heinberg and David Goyer.
“It’s still going to start in 1916 but the thing that happens in Sandman No.1, the point where it starts is not 1888, it’s now,” he said. “(This) gives us tremendous freedom… That is very liberating.”
Sandman charted a long, poetic story arc over its original 75-issue run that followed the adventures of Morpheus, lord of dreams and member of a pantheon of immortal beings called The Endless who personify certain universal concepts that, along with dream, includes death, desire, destiny, delirium, despair, and destruction.
An adaptation of the popular comic book series from DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint was originally slated to be a film with Joseph Gordon-Levitt directing and starring. He exited the feature three years ago after creative differences. The project even goes back further when Gaiman said that an adaptation was in the works while at Comic-Con. Gaiman and Goyer were also involved in the film adaptation.
Gaiman’s TV portfolio of adaptations also includes American Gods on Starz as well as the new Amazon series Good Omens.