There have been numerous casting announcements for the Netflix adaption of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman leading up to San Diego Comic Con, and with each new addition the hype has only grown. From Gwendoline Christie’s Satan to Mark Hamil as Merv Pumpkinhead, and Thomas Sturridge’s haunting Dream/Morpheus, the cast is stellar, and the reveals so far have been pretty great.
The titular Sandman, Morpheus himself, has escaped imprisonment, and is searching the world, and a few surreal versions of the underworld, for the magical tools that he needs in order to sort out the mess that has become of Earth. In the series, The Dreaming, a land of nightmares, fantasies, and dreams, has become entangled in the real world. It’s up to Morpheus to figure out what’s going on and set the various worlds to rights.
During the panel the cast and crew expressed how much they appreciated the source material, and it appears as if this will be a faithful adaption of Gaiman’s work. Additionally, Gaiman revealed that Dave McKean, the original Sandman comics cover artist, came out of retirement and designed unique end title credits for all 10 episodes of the series. Starting in 1989, McKean produced all the comic book covers for The Sandman. This spans almost a decade of work, as the series ended in 1997. He also illustrated the covers to all of the collected trade paperback editions.
Sandman is set to release exclusively on Netflix on August 5.
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Editor’s Note: Release dates within this article are based in the U.S., but will be updated with local Australian dates as soon as we know more.