Exactly how involved is Neil Gaiman with Netflix’s Sandman show?

Netflix shocked many when it announced its ambitious plan to create a live-action adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s masterpiece, The Sandman. But exactly how much of a contribution will Neil Gaiman make to the upcoming series?

The Sandman is undoubtedly one of the most beloved comic series of all time, and has for many years has been deemed unfilmable. The critically-acclaimed series follows the adventures of Dream, who is the personification of dreams. He goes by many names: Sandman, Morpheus, the Dream King, Shaper, Oneiros, and more. Dream is one of the seven beings in an anthropomorphic family known as the Endless. Other members include Death, Destiny, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium (formerly Delight).

In the first volume, Dream is mistakenly captured by Roderick Burgess, from the Order of the Ancient Mysteries, who intended to capture his older sister Death to achieve immortality. In fear of penalty, Burgess keeps Dream imprisoned for 72 years. When Dream finally escapes, he faces the perilous challenge of reclaiming his totems of power: his helm, a ruby, and a pouch of sand.

This is merely the first of 10 incredible volumes. At bottom, The Sandman is a story about stories, interwoven with classic retellings of legend and myth in which Dream takes a starring role. It’s so visually imaginative, and it goes on so many fascinating digressions, that someone would have be very brave to take it on.

Neil Gaiman has signed on to serve as an executive producer/writer on the Netflix series, alongside David S. Goyer (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight). Allan Heinberg (Wonder Woman) will act as showrunner. It remains to be seen if Gaiman will have any further involvement in the production, but he gave us a clue on Twitter:

So how involved is he? “More involved than with American Gods. Less than with Good Omens.”

This is a pretty interesting answer. Gaiman was incredibly involved in the production of Good Omens, which proved to be a worldwide success. The six-part mini-series was adapted by BBC and Amazon from the book of the same name Gaiman wrote with Terry Pratchett. Gaiman wrote both the screenplay for all six episodes and acted as showrunner. It would be difficult to be any more involved in a show than Neil Gaiman was with Good Omens.

American Gods, meanwhile, is adapted from Gaiman’s well-known novel of the same name. Gaiman worked as an executive producer on seasons one and two and has only cowritten one episode: the season 2 premiere. American Gods is another highly rated TV show and is set to return for a third season Starz next year.

Neil Gaiman’s work tends to translate well to television, and when the man himself is involved, it only seem to get better.  It will be exciting to see how The Sandman works on TV, knowing that there have been failed attempts to adapt it in the past. With Gaiman involved quite heavily, it looks like it already has a huge head start!

Gaiman also recently revealed that the show he will bring the timeline for the main story forward. Morpheus will escape imprisonment closer to our time, compared to 1988 in the comics.

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