The Sandman Season 1 TV Series Details
The Sandman is an American fantasy drama television series based on the 1989–1996 comic book written by Neil Gaiman and published by DC Comics. The series was developed by Gaiman, David S. Goyer, and Allan Heinberg for the streaming service Netflix, and is produced by DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Television. Like the comic, The Sandman tells the story of Dream/Morpheus, the titular Sandman. The series stars Tom Sturridge as the title character, with Boyd Holbrook, Vivienne Acheampong, and Patton Oswalt in supporting roles.
Efforts to adapt The Sandman to film began in 1991 but floundered in development hell for many years. In 2013, Goyer pitched a film adaptation of the series to Warner Bros. Goyer and Gaiman were set to produce alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who was planned to star and possibly direct. However, Gordon-Levitt exited over creative differences in 2016. Due to the prolonged development of the film, Warner Bros. shifted its focus to television. Netflix signed a deal to produce the series in June 2019, and filming lasted from October 2020 to August 2021.
The Sandman premiered on August 5, 2022, with an additional episode premiering on August 19. In November 2022, it was renewed for a second season. The series has received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise going towards the casting, production design, costumes, faithfulness to its source material, visual effects, and performances, particularly those of Sturridge and David Thewlis.
STORY
PRODUCTION
Development
As a film
Attempts to adapt The Sandman, an American comic book written by Neil Gaiman and published by DC Comics from 1989 to 1996, had languished in development hell since the 1990s. Inquisitr wrote that “Sandman‘s nature as a comic has been a very unique and life-changing experience for many and that made it very difficult and challenging to translate into the small and big screens.”
Gaiman was first asked about a film adaptation by DC’s corporate sibling Warner Bros. in 1991, an offer to which he was apprehensive. Development on a film adaptation began in 1996, with Roger Avary attached to direct and Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio writing the script. Elliot and Rossio’s script merged the first two Sandman storylines, Preludes & Nocturnes and The Doll’s House, into a single story. While Gaiman enjoyed the script, Avary was fired due to creative issues with executive producer Jon Peters. Following this, William Farmer wrote a screenplay in 1998, which Gaiman did not like and called it “not only the worst Sandman script I’ve ever seen, but quite easily the worst script I’ve ever read.” His script featured radical differences from the source material, such as casting Dream as a villain and making him Lucifer Morningstar’s brother.
After reading Farmer’s script, Gaiman became doubtful that The Sandman would be adapted to film. In 2007, he remarked that he would “rather see no Sandman movie made than a bad Sandman movie”, but added that he “[felt] like the time for a Sandman movie is coming soon. We need someone who has the same obsession with the source material as Peter Jackson had with Lord of the Rings or Sam Raimi had with Spider-Man.” He said that he could see Terry Gilliam directing the adaptation: “I would always give anything to Terry Gilliam, forever, so if Terry Gilliam ever wants to do Sandman then as far as I’m concerned Terry Gilliam should do Sandman.” In 2013, DC Entertainment president Diane Nelson said that a Sandman film was a project she considered a priority, considering the prospect as rich as the Harry Potter universe.
David S. Goyer, who had worked on the Dark Knight Trilogy, pitched a Sandman adaptation to Warner Bros. in 2013, and by February 2014 was set to produce the film alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Gaiman, with Jack Thorne writing. Warner Bros. planned for Gordon-Levitt to star and possibly direct. The film was set to be produced by New Line Cinema as part of a slate of films based on properties published under DC’s Vertigo imprint, separate from the DC Extended Universe. Eric Heisserer was hired to rewrite the film’s script in March 2016; immediately afterwards, Gordon-Levitt departed due to disagreements with Warner Bros. over the creative direction of the film. The following November, Heisserer turned in his draft but departed, stating that the project should be an HBO series instead of a film: “I … came to the conclusion that the best version of this property exists as an HBO series or limited series, not as a feature film, not even as a trilogy. The structure of the feature film really doesn’t mesh with this.”
Transition to television
Due to the prolonged development period of the film, in 2010 DC Entertainment shifted focus onto developing a television adaptation. Film director James Mangold pitched a series concept to HBO while consulting with Gaiman on an unofficial basis, but did not materialize due to a “political turf war at WB”. It was reported in September 2010 that Warner Bros. Television was licensing the rights to produce a TV series, and that Supernatural creator Eric Kripke was their preferred candidate to adapt the saga. Gaiman later revealed that he disapproved of Kripke’s take, and development on the television adaptation halted because Goyer’s film was progressing smoothly.
Around 2018, Gaiman was working on the television adaption of Good Omens, the book he had co-written with Terry Pratchett, when Goyer approached him again about a television adaption of The Sandman. By that point, Goyer had several additional successful screenplays including The Dark Knight trilogy. Goyer connected Gaiman to screenwriter Allan Heinberg, a fan of Gaiman’s work. While Heinberg initially refused his offer to work on the series as he initially perceived it as “unfilmable”, Goyer managed to convince him to do so as he was planning to adapt the comics as a series. Heinberg became the showrunner and executive producer, and collaborated with Gaiman, who was also an executive producer, while creating the series.
In June 2019, Netflix signed a deal with Warner Bros. to produce the series and gave it an order of eleven episodes, the first ten of which were initially released together, and the eleventh as a bonus episode. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. pitched the series to multiple networks including HBO, which declined to move ahead with it due to its massive budget. Netflix “snapped it up” as part of its attempts to obtain big intellectual properties and attract subscribers. The series was developed by Gaiman, Goyer, and Allan Heinberg, who also serve as executive producers. Gaiman said he would be more involved than he was with the 2017–2021 television adaptation of his American Gods (2001), but less than he was with the 2019 adaptation of Good Omens (1990).
Writing
The creative team sought to faithfully adapt the source material, beginning with the first season adapting Preludes & Nocturnes, The Doll’s House, and the first two issues of Dream Country. The creators made significant narrative changes from the source material with Gaiman’s approval, and also received feedback while creating the sets, with Heinberg saying “everything gets Neil’s eyes and his feedback”. The team was inspired by the art from the comics, with the props and sets being created to be faithful to the comics. The series features changes intended to modernize the source material for a contemporary audience. For example, it begins in 2021 rather than 1989, with Dream now having been imprisoned for 105 years instead of 75 years. Other characters were similarly updated, as “… if we were creating this character now, what gender would the character be? … who would they be? What would they be doing?”. Changes included expanding the role of The Corinthian into being the Big Bad for the first season, altering various characters and storylines, and removing references to other DC Comics characters such as Martian Manhunter and Mister Miracle. John Dee was not depicted as Doctor Destiny and John Constantine was reimagined as a female character, Joanna Constantine. Gaiman opted to remove references to the DC Universe as the overall Sandman series moved away from the initial ties with the DC Universe, as well as avoid potential implications that the series would tie into other DC Comics adaptions in the future. The role of Matthew was also expanded in the series for Morpheus to have someone with which he can share his thoughts, which were depicted as thought bubbles in the comics and impractical to do in live action. Gaiman was particular about Morpheus’ dialogue in the series and described it as the “thing I [Gaiman] was most obsessive about”. Upon re-reading the comics, Gaiman felt he “in a weird way did all the work” as he thought the comics “had kind of been rather ahead of its time”, with Heinberg adding “The Sandman comics were leagues ahead of everybody in the late ’80s in terms of the depiction of women, race, sexuality and gender”, while noting that changes were made for the series.
Goyer, Heinberg, and Gaiman met at Gaiman’s house to discuss the first season, in which they came up with the story for the first episode in two days. They often discussed “Why is it essential that we tell the story of The Sandman right now?”, with Heinberg stating that the answer “has informed every creative decision we’ve made since: The Sandman is an exploration of what it means to be human. To be mortal and therefore vulnerable. Capable of being hurt, but also capable of loving and being loved. The Sandman is the story of an honorable, arrogant king who slowly very slowly learns how to love. How to be a loving friend, a loving brother, a loving father.” Goyer summarized the series as “a story about a god who, over the course of the story, sheds his godhood and becomes mortal and learns what it means to be mortal … It’s a story about a really fucked-up dysfunctional family. The Endless, even though they are godlike beings, they all have their petty squabbles. Some of them hate each other. Some of them love each other. It’s just that when they have fights, entire worlds and universes suffer” and called it a melodrama. He opted to include the stand-alone issues in the series in which Morpheus did not appear since he felt that it was “one of the things that’s wonderful about Sandman” and felt those issues did not involve Morpheus but were set in that world. He added that Morpheus was sometimes a protagonist and catalyst for events in the series. He described Morpheus as a character who “cares about humanity in the abstract, but not in the specific”. Gaiman also felt that the Sleeping Sickness epidemic in the series was “incredibly apt” due to “some incredibly dreamlike moments because we were shooting during a pandemic”.
Writing for a potential second season had already begun by August 2022. Netflix confirmed they had greeenlit a second season on November 2, 2022, following rumors earlier that day from DC Comics and Gaiman that the series had been renewed.
CASTING
Patton Oswalt, a longtime Sandman fan, was the first actor who was cast in the series; he was cast as the voice of Matthew the Raven the day before The Sandman was pitched to Netflix. In September 2020, Tom Sturridge entered negotiations to portray Dream, after screen testing alongside Tom York and Colin Morgan, while Liam Hemsworth and Dacre Montgomery were under consideration for the role of the Corinthian. Gaiman had said he had watched over 1,500 casting auditions for Morpheus and felt Sturridge was right for the role after watching his audition tapes. Sturridge had been unfamiliar with the source material but became a devoted fan after he was cast. Casting news was kept tightly under wraps and was not publicly released when the first season began filming. According to Boyd Holbrook, the casting process was long, recalling that he auditioned around January 2020 but did not receive any further information until September. In January 2021, Sturridge, Gwendoline Christie, Vivienne Acheampong, Holbrook, Charles Dance, Asim Chaudhry, and Sanjeev Bhaskar were announced to be starring in the series.
Twelve more cast members were announced in May 2021: Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Mason Alexander Park, Donna Preston, Jenna Coleman, Niamh Walsh, Joely Richardson, David Thewlis, Kyo Ra, Stephen Fry, Razane Jammal, Sandra James Young, and Oswalt. Park, who was also a fan of the source material, decided to contact Gaiman on Twitter for their role as Desire. Gaiman had sent their videos to Heinberg, who both agreed upon casting Park. The second casting announcement was met with backlash from a section of the Sandman fanbase, with some criticizing the casting of black actors as characters traditionally depicted as white in the comics, such as Howell-Baptiste as Death. Mehrul Bari of The Daily Star felt that while the backlash against the casting announcement was clearly “rooted in flagrant phobias”, some of the casting choices seemed like “stunt casting” that continued tokenism in Netflix productions and comic book adaptations. For example, Bari noted that aside from Death, the rest of the Endless, including Dream, were still played by white actors. Gaiman dismissed the fan backlash and defended both Baptiste’s casting as Death and Park’s casting as Desire, with the latter being depicted as androgynous in the comics.
RELEASE
The Sandman Season 1 Download Files
- S02E01 – “Sleep of the Just”
- S02E02 – “Imperfect Hosts”
- S02E03 – “Dream a Little Dream of Me”
- S02E04 – “A Hope in Hell”
- S02E05 – “24/7”
- S02E06 – “The Sound of Her Wings”
- S02E07 – “The Doll’s House”
- S02E08 – “Playing House”
- S02E09 – “Collectors”
- S02E10 – “Lost Hearts”
- S02E11 – “Dream of a Thousand Cats”
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