Neil Gaiman Praises Netflix’s Sandman Series, Itself Still Shrouded in Immense Secrecy

Filming on Netflix‘s television adaptation of Neil Gaiman‘s Sandman has been ongoing for some time now, to the point that that famed writer has seen plenty of footage. It’s not that wild for the series to be filming at the current time, COVID-19 restrictions and all, but what is a little bizarre is that even though production is ongoing not a single piece of casting from the show has been released (a lone report on an actor up for the part of Dream has appeared but has never been confirmed). A fan praised the series for this on Twitter with Gaiman chiming in to say “I’m proud of all involved.”

Back in October, when Gaiman confirmed that production had started, the writer teased that announcements were coming soon. “Oh, we started shooting on Thursday,” Gaiman tweeted on October 18. “Dr John Hathaway has brought a book from the museum in which he works, to Roderick Burgess. But you’re right, it’s going to be time to announce some casting soon.” Gaiman’s tweet describes the opening scene of The Sandman #1, in which museum curator John Hathaway, under duress, delivers a book to occultist Roderick Burgess. Burgess uses the knowledge in that text in his attempt to capture Death of the Endless. He instead captures Dream, setting The Sandman‘s story into motion.

The Sandman has been in development in multiple forms as an adaptation including a movie and other versions of a TV series. The fan-favorite comic saw its first adaptation as an audiobook exclusive to Audible. Gaiman has said that where the audio adaptation is unwaveringly faithful to the original comics, the Netflix adaptation will modernize the original story.

“Doing the Netflix TV series, we’re very much looking at that as going, ‘Okay, it is 2020, let’s say that I was doing Sandman starting in 2020, what would we do? How would we change things? What gender would this character be? Who would this person be? What would be happening?’” Gaiman said previously.

He continued, “For Netflix right now, people have tried making some movies and TV adaptations for 30 years, and actively tried making them for 25 years, and they’ve never worked. And they never worked because of all the special effects and what would be needed to do the special effects. They never worked because you were making something that was adult. People would write Sandman movie scripts, and they go, ‘But it’s an R-rated movie, and we can’t have $100 million R-rated movies.’ So, that wouldn’t happen. You needed to get to a world in which long-form storytelling is an advantage rather than a disadvantage. And the fact that we have seventy-five issues of Sandman plus — essentially, 13 full books — worth of material, is a really good thing. It’s not a drawback. It’s on our side. And the fact that we’re in a world in which we can take things that only existed in comic book art, and that can now exist in reality.”

No premiere date for The Sandman has been announced just yet.