The Sandman Cracks the Top 3 Among All Streaming Services on Nielsen Charts

Netflix has been having one heck of a year with releases like Stranger Things and The Sandman. The streaming service topped streaming numbers with the fourth season of Stranger Things hitting the top of the charts on Nielsen. Now, their latest offering, The Sandman, has made its debut at number three on the streaming charts. According to TV Line, The Sandman pulled in 1 billion minutes viewed across their 10 episode season. Netflix's Virgin River beat out The Sandman for the no. 2 spot with 1.39 billion minutes watched across 42 episodes.

The Sandman is the first project based on the character to ever make it out of the development stage. There was a film  developed, with Joseph Gordon Levitt attached to star. Previously, Gaiman revealed while talking with Entertainment Weekly why he refused to come aboard previous Sandman projects.

"I had refused to get involved," Gaiman said of previous adaptations, most recently one with Joseph Gordon-Levitt attached to both direct and star in. "I'd refused to write them; I refused to be the executive producer. I wouldn't do it because I knew that if I did, I would lose the only power that I had, which was to be able to speak out against a bad Sandman movie. Fortunately, Sandman was just too expensive for anybody to justify making. And if you're trying to make a Sandman movie, the first question is, what do you throw out? Because Sandman, by the time it was finished, is 3,000 pages of comic. So what is your movie then?"

Gaiman went on to recall some of the bad adaptations that almost happened, including a version from Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary that was over as soon as he pitched it to the heads of Warner Bros. He also spoke about a version from producer Jon Peters (of Kevin Smith's Superman movie with a giant spider fame), adding: "There was a version of the script, and I'll never forget the first line: 'A-ha, foolish mortals! As if your puny weapons could hurt me, the mighty Lord of Dreams, the Sandman!' And it got worse from there." 

Tom Sturridge leads the all-star cast for the series playing the titular character and Lord of Dreams. He stars alongside Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer, Charles Dance as Roderick Burgess, Asim Chaudhry as Abel, Sanjeev Bhaskar as Cain, Jenna Coleman as Johanna Constantine, Joely Richardson as Ethel Cripps, David Thewlis as John Dee, Boyd Holbrook as The Corinthian, Stephen Fry as Gilbert, Patton Oswalt as the voice of Dream's raven Matthew, .and as Dream's siblings, Mason Alexander Park as Desire and Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death. The first season of the series is now streaming on Netflix.

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