Death, from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, to make onscreen debut ahead of Netflix series

Of all the big budget sci-fi and fantasy shows on the horizon, I may be most excited for The Sandman, Netflix’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s wildly imaginative, phantasmagoric comic series that ran from 1989 to 1996. The Sandman is about…I mean, it’s about a lot of things, but it revolves around seven siblings known as the Endless, eternal beings who are at once individuals with their own agendas and distillations of concepts like Desire and Despair and Destruction. It’s weird, and Netflix will have quite a job in pulling this story off, but if it can succeed, we could have something special.

Possibly the most popular of the Endless is Death, the second oldest of the siblings. She’s the embodiment of the end of all things, sure, but she’s also a cheery goth girl who’s a lot more easy-going than most of her siblings. If you see her, it probably means your life is over, but at least she’s gonna be nice about it.

We have no idea who will play Death on Netflix’s series (although I have plenty of ideas). We don’t even know if the show will be live-action. I mean, I imagine it will, but Sandman is so visually wild it’ll take a massive investment. Animation would definitely be easier. It might even be a better fit.

We’ll get a preview of what an animated Death would like when Wonder Woman: Bloodlines — a direct-to-video animated movie produced by DC — comes out this October. Included in the package will be a short film featuring Death (voice of Jamie Chung) helping an artist (Leonard Nam) come to terms with his artistic legacy…and his own demise.

Basically, I’m cool with anything that involves Sandman characters coming to the screen. With any luck, the short — simply called ‘Death’ — will prove that Gaiman’s creations can work outside the pages of comics.

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Speaking of Gaiman and animation, did you know that he wrote the English dub for Hayao Miyazaki’s 1997 classic Princess Mononoke, which starred the likes of Billy Bob Thornton, Minnie Driver and Billy Crudup? That’s been rumored for a long time, but Gaiman finally confirmed it on Twitter:

Consider this 22-year-old anime mystery solved.

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