Years after writer Eric Heisserer dropped out of making a Sandman movie because—in his words—“it needs to go to TV,” and slightly fewer years after original Sandman comic writer Neil Gaiman mentioned that he hoped the success of American Gods would convince someone to make a Sandman TV show, someone is finally making a Sandman TV show. This comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which says Netflix has made a “massive financial deal with Warner Bros. Television” to make Gaiman’s Sandman into a live-action TV series, with the streaming service already picking it up for an 11-episode season.
Grey’s Anatomy veteran and Wonder Woman screenplay writer Allan Heinberg will serve as the showrunner and will write the series, with Gaiman and David S. Goyer executive producing. Specific details about the adaptation haven’t been announced, naturally, but Netflix says it’s going to be an “epic original series that dives deep into this multi-layered universe beloved by fans around the world.” In other words, they want this to be a good show.
For those who never read Sandman, Gaiman’s books have very little to do with the DC superhero called The Sandman and have even less to do with the Marvel villain called Sandman. Instead, the series is about Morpheus, The Lord Of Dreams, who is the master of a realm called The Dreaming—and sometimes he’s just called Dream. Either way, it’s a horror/fantasy story that occasionally leaned really far in one direction over the other, with the first arc following Dream as he tries to get his collection of magical accessories back from various power-hungry humans. Depending on how faithful this is to the book, it could end up going extremely dark. Also, it technically takes place in the same universe as the main DC books, so there’s even a chance Superman will show up! (He won’t…but what if he does?!)