The drama by DC Comics and creator Neil Gaiman also featured Vivienne Acheampong, Boyd Holbrook, Charles Dance, Asim Chaudhry and Sanjeeve Bhaskar.
A year and a half after being selected for the series, Netflix unveiled the cast for its big budget adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s beloved Sandman.
Tom Sturridge will play the drama, based on Gaiman’s DC Comics series, with the role of Dream, the Lord of the Dreaming. Gwendoline Christie plays with Lucifer, Ruller or Hell. Vivienne Acheampong, Boyd Holbrook, Charles Dance, Asim Chaudhry and Sanjeeve Bhaskar conclude the dark fantasy drama.
Here’s how Netflix describes its live action Sandman: “A rich blend of modern myths and dark fantasy in which contemporary fiction, historical drama and legend are seamlessly intertwined, The Sandman follows the people and places affected by Morpheus, the Dream King, while repairing the cosmic – and human – mistakes he made during his great existence. ‘
Sturridge (Starz’s Sweet bitter) assumes a role briefly associated with Joseph Gordon-Levitt when Sandman was developed in early 2016 as a feature film for New Line. With Christie and Dance, Sandman is also working on a mini-Game of Thrones reunion for the duo. Dance will feature Roderick Burgess, a charlatan, extortionist and magician.
Acheampong (The witches) plays Lucienne, the chief librarian and trusted guardian of Dream’s realm. Holbrook (Narcos) is played as The Corinthian, an escaped nightmare that wants to taste everything the world has to offer. Chaudhry (Black Mirror: Bandersnatch) and Bhaskar (Yesterday) assumes the roles of Abel and Cain, the first victim and the first predator, who are inhabitants and loyal subjects of the Dream Kingdom.
Gaiman (American Gods) and Allan Heinberg (Wonder Woman, Grey’s Anatomy) co-wrote the series, with the latter as presenter. David S. Goyer (Batman Start, Foundation) exec produces the drama of Warner Bros. Television.
“For the past 33 years, the Sandman characters have been breathing and walking around in my head talking,” Gaiman said. “I’m incredibly happy that they’ll finally walk out of my head and into reality now. I can not wait until the people out there see what we saw as Dream and take the rest of them. Flesh, and the flesh belongs to the best actors out there.It’s amazing, and I’m so grateful to the actors and everyone The Sandman collaborators – Netflix, Warner Bros., DC, to Allan Heinberg and David Goyer, and the legion of artists and geniuses in the program – to make the wildest of all my dreams come true. ‘
Sandman landed on Netflix in June 2019 with an order of 11 episodes for the then sources The Hollywood Reporter was a massive financial commitment. The treaty at the time, according to sources, was the most expensive TV series DC Entertainment had ever done. Three months later, super producer Greg Berlanti announced that she Green lantern TV series for HBO Max “promise to be our biggest DC show ever.”
Sources say Warners, which controls the IP, has the Sandman TV pitch to various outlets, including the HBO for siblings. The premium cable network did not make a play for the series, given the huge price tag (and the likely number of other major world shows in the offing), and Netflix snapped it up while the streamer continues to make an active play for massive IP. it can be turned into subscriber-friendly franchises a la Amazon’s Lord of the Rings and HBOs Game of Thrones.
Gaiman’s beloved comic strip has had a long and challenging road to the screen. Attempts to turn Sandman in a feature film franchise beginning in the 1990s with Warner Bros. – the parent company of Vertigo, the former print of DC Comics. The project went through several incarnations and writers in the 1990s and early 2000s and eventually developed into purgatory. Gaiman announced in late 2013 that he was collaborating with Gordon-Levitt for a feature film to be screened by the New Line owner of Warner Bros. Gordon-Levitt would have starred and played the director before leaving the film following creative differences with the studio in March 2016. Eric Heisserer, the last screenwriter associated with New Line’s Sandman, said in November 2016 that he was no longer involved.
Sturridge is being held back by WME. Christie (Star Wars) is with WME, Independent Talent Group, Untitled and Jackoway Austen. Dance is with Tavistock Wood Management. Holbrook is with CAA, Range Media and Morris Yorn. Acheampong and Chaudhry are with Curtis Brown Group and Goodman Genow. Bhaskar is with United Agents.
A premiere date for Sandman has not yet been determined.