It feels strange to be writing these words, but The Sandman, an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s beloved comics, is actually real. Netflix dropped our first look at the series, which is “coming soon,” on Saturday.
It’s not much. Just a minute of quick-cutting clips that set up the basic story: In the early 1900s, a ritual led by none other than Tywin Lannister himself, Charles Dance, summons Dream (Tom Sturridge), the lord of our nighttime imaginings, and imprisons him. Roughly 100 years later, in 2021, Dream escapes.
While the Netflix series, which was developed by Allan Heinberg (co-writer on Wonder Woman), is expected to roughly follow the events of the source, don’t expect a carbon copy. The Sandman comics first published in 1989 and the then-modern world Dream escaped into back then will be updated in this modernized adaptation.
There’s been lots of attempts to adapt The Sandman over the years, and Netflix’s teasing first look confirms, at long last, that this one is really, truly happening.
