Netflix has shared the first teaser for their upcoming Sandman TV series at their global fan event Tudum. The short clip is a live-action adaptation of the occult ritual that captures Dream (Tom Sturridge) and kicks off the whole story.
Based on The Sandman comic books, written by Neil Gaiman and drawn by Sam Keith and Mike Dringenberg, the series will adapt the first two volumes of the books, “Preludes & Nocturnes” and “The Doll’s House. The show will tell the story of Dream, a godlike being who’s the personification of all dreams and stories.
When a ritual to capture his sister Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) goes wrong, and Dream is caught instead, The Lord of Stories finds himself held prisoner for 105 years until a chance encounter finally allows him to escape. Free Dream sets about taking revenge on those who imprisoned him as well as rebuilding his kingdom. Along the way, he’ll battle the devil, serial killers, and his siblings, The Endless – who represent similar concepts to himself – to rebuild what was taken from him.
It’s been a long road to the small screen for The Sandman. A live-action adaptation has been in development for years now, but the sheer scale of the project made adapting it difficult, to say the least. Netflix picked up the rights to the series in 2019 after striking a bargain with Warner Bros.
Starring alongside Sturridge and Howell-Baptiste will be Gwendoline Christie, Vivienne Acheampong, Boyd Holbrook, Charles Dance, Asim Chaudhry, Patton Oswalt, and Sanjeev Bhaskar in supporting roles.
No release date has been announced for The Sandman yet, but it will stream exclusively on Netflix.