Neil Gaiman Reveals the Netflix ‘Sandman’ Series Will Be Set in Present Day

Meredith Woerner
·3 min read

The Netflix adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman” will be slightly different than the original comic book series. While discussing the incredibly popular graphic novel and audio adaptation on the DC FanDome panel with Dirk Maggs, G. Willow Wilson and Michael Sheen, Gaiman revealed the status for the hotly anticipated upcoming Netflix adaptation that was announced in 2019.

When pressed for details on the long-awaited series, Gaiman first stated the obvious; due to the outbreak of the coronavirus, everything has been on pause. However, the author revealed that he had been using that time to get the script as “close to perfect as we can.” A task he admits, was rather fun.

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“Right now as the universal pause button is starting to come off, we’re starting to cast again,” Gaiman said. “I’m getting these inspiring and wonderful emails with production designs with places that I’d only ever seen in the comics before, now being rendered in 3D, and I’m being asked to comment on it. That’s amazing.”

The creator continued comparing the new Netflix series to the current adaptations. “Part of the joy of doing the audio adaptation was going ‘this is going to be the nearest thing we can do to an audiobook of those first three graphic novels and hopefully all of the graphic novels.’ And we’re going to start it in 1988 and it’s going to end in about 1991 or 1992. ’Sandman’ is a very compressed story even though it takes place all through time and space.”

“What we’re doing with Netflix is saying ‘OK It’s still going to start in 1916, but the thing that happens in ‘Sandman’ 1, the point that the story starts is not 1988. It’s now. And how does that change the story? What does that give us? What does that make us have to look at that we wouldn’t have to look at if we were setting it as a period piece? What is that going to do to the gender of characters, what is that going to do to the nature of characters? What’s that going to do to the story? And that has been an absolute delight. Because it means we are always being true to the story and being true to the characters. But it gives us tremendous freedom to go, ‘OK if we were doing it now what would ‘Sandman’ be?’ And that, again, is very liberating.”

Check out the full schedule for Saturday’s DC FanDome Event here.

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